AND WE DON'T EVEN HAVE MANDATORY KINDERGARTEN:

States with the Smartest Kids (The Daily Beast, 1/24/11)

The biggest standardized test is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which scores every kid in the country based on their exam proficiency in reading and math. With 50 different school systems, NAEP testing is the only comprehensive, if imperfect, gauge for comparing how America’s children are educated.

So The Daily Beast decided to use this enormous amount of consistent data to try to figure out which states are collectively doing the best job educating their kids.