This is why I referred to the PSAT as a universal benchmark there.
The cut scores for National Merit Scholar semi-finalists in each state are really telling. Same test, same age-cohort, and yet the 99.5th percentile in Massachusetts (thereby proving that I can, too spell it) is 230-something in any given year, and it's below 200 in Mississippi.
Random note that PSAT is targeted towards the college-bound and could suffer serious sampling skew if different states encourage different levels of involvement. I know some states offer their own scholarships based on scores.
Back to the original bit, he may have pulled the bulk of his material from the "Dr" (in quotes because I wasn't sure if EdD gets that honorific or not.) She seems to have a huge axe to grind. Her rhetoric is sprinkled with such gems as the idea that because the non-fiction language arts CC has 10 standards vs. 9 for fiction means less than half time would be spent on literature. On the one hand, what a tragic mistake if curriculum was derived from such a shirt-sighted equal apportionment; on the other hand, I'd gamble the average adult spends a vastly larger percentage of their reading on non-fiction. In a similar vein she pities the poor English teacher who learned drama, poetry, etc. and is now faced with non-fiction and no skills for teaching it?
