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Education Sector put Wisconsin at the top of its Pangloss Index, a ranking of states based on how much they are overly cheery about how their students are doing. It based much of the ranking on the assessment of data related to what a state does to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind education law.
“Wisconsin policymakers are fooling parents by pretending that everything is perfect,” said Kevin Carey, the group’s research and policy manager. “As a result, the most vulnerable students aren’t getting the attention they need.”
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction officials said they had not yet seen the report.
But Tony Evers, the state’s deputy superintendent of public instruction, objected to a nearly identical ranking from Education Sector last year and said state officials and schools were focused on improving student achievement, especially of low-income and minority students on the short end of achievement gaps in education.
Carey said a key to Wisconsin’s standing was the fact that the DPI put a smaller percentage of schools than any other state on its list of those not meeting the progress standards required by the federal law.
Wisconsin was the sole occupant last year in the Education Sector’s first version of the index, but it shares the ranking this year with Iowa.
The index is named after Pangloss, a character in “Candide,” an 18th-century novel by the French author Voltaire in which the character Pangloss believes we live in the best of all possible worlds.
