Line up Michigan's standardized test scores to other states, and the results don't look great.

The Great Lakes State ranks at or near the bottom of the pack in several important categories, including whether more students are meeting academic targets. And Michigan ranks dead last nationally in proficiency growth since 2003.

Those findings were laid out in a new research paper by Brian Jacob, an education policy professor at University of Michigan, who argues the U.S. Department of Education should highlight the performance gap between the highest and lowest performing states in hopes it will spur states like Michigan to improve.

"By shining a spotlight on states with particularly low student performance, the department can bring attention to the struggles facing public education in these states," Jacob wrote. "The literature on school accountability suggests that this visibility alone can put pressure on educational actors to reform."

The test scores cited in Jacob's paper reflect the performance of 4th graders and 8th graders on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an examine given to a sample of students

In his paper, Jacob questions whether states will feel less urgency to improve now that a new federal education law restores significant power to the states in areas like holding low-performing schools accountable.

"While greater local control certainly has some benefits," he said, "it risks exacerbating the massive disparities in educational performance across states that already exists."

Jacob highlighted another strategy to help improve educational performance: Greater cooperation between states. He said the education department could examine supporting "interstate compacts," where states with similar populations work together using funding and technical assistance from the department.