Here’s a graph released by the Urban Institute showing federal NAEP test scores by state ranked in order of adjustments for race, poverty, and the like.

It’s long been hoped that test scores could uncover which states are doing well. What are the schools doing right in, say, Vermont and wrong in Oklahoma?

Well, it mostly turns out that Vermont is closer to the Canadian border.

As old time NAEP moneyballers would expect, Massachusetts does best both on raw score (blue dot) and demographically adjusted score (black dot).

The highest raw test scores in any public school district in the country are in Lexington, MA.

Texas gets its expected huge boost from adjustment for its largely Hispanic student body up to second place, while California comes in 47th. (I remain uncertain how real Texas’s NAEP scores are: its SAT and ACT scores are not so exciting.)

Indiana does very well, finishing third.

The boring reality is that once states are adjusted for demographics, they typically fall in a narrow range (+ or – 2 or 3 months of schooling) around the national average.

A few things jump out: Idaho and Utah spend very little on public schools per student, less than disastrous Puerto Rico, but their raw NAEP scores have been decent. But that’s because they are very white states. Adjust for their being white and they are below average.