Enough with the gloom and doom about Massachusetts schools

Mike the Mad Biologist grows weary of pro-school types who try to whip up a funding frenzy by complaining about how awful schools are these days:

... If Massachusetts were a foreign country, it would, hands down, perform better than any European country, and as well or a close second (even better, in some cases) than East Asian countries. Year in and year out, Massachusetts' performance on the NAEP is stellar, particularly when one accounts for childhood poverty (while the state, on average, is wealthy, there are pockets of serious poverty). In fact, Massachusetts does a better job than would be expected given the amount of childhood poverty. ...