Although Iowa used to be at the top, several education rankings show Iowa in the middle of the pack compared to other states. KCCI's Amanda Rooker looked through test scores and decades of data to find out how Iowa public schools are really doing.

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If you go online and search "Best states for education," you'll find several national organizations ranking states by Pre-K-12th grade. World Population Review ranks Iowa at no. 13, Wallet Hub puts Iowa at no. 19, and US News and World Report, one of the most well-known organizations for education rankings, lists Iowa at no. 24.

Margaret Buckton with Iowa School Finance Information Services says the National Assessment of Education Progress test might play a key role in those rankings. It's the same test given out every two years to fourth and eighth-grade students in every state.

"In the 1990s, Iowa was ranked in the top five in just about every comparison of reading and math scores on the NAEP test," Buckton said. But the most recent NAEP data shows that by 2019, Iowa fell to the middle of the pack.

"It's interesting. Iowa students are testing slightly better on their scores than they did in the 90s," Buckton explained. "It's not that our education system has gotten worse. It's that others have improved and we're not statistically significantly different than about 15 states in that middle of the pack."

She says Iowa can learn from states that have risen up in the ranks....https://www.kcci.com/article/report-card-on-iowa-schools-data-shows-how-iowa-compares-to-other-states/40961606?