HS Rankings
From experience I'd have to say the CR school system stinks. Compared with the other schools I attended the CR school district was MUCH easier. Additionally the CR schools rank themselves on their own testing system, the ITEDs are horribly easy, as Adam even mentioned. A much better test would be the SRA exam. Additionally, in ranking schools, there should be more factors considered: grad rate, variety of colleges the grads go to, success of grads in college, SAT and ACT exam scores evaluated against the entire population of students at a given HS, the list goes on. It just upsets me that people are fed this BS their whole lives that the Iowa school system is the best, it's not, and the way they support their case is simply bad statistical methods. I can explain in further detail the statistical flaws in the evaluation of Iowa Schools, but it will take some space, and it will require knowledge of some stats concepts.