More on education. This week the news came that Nevada's K-12 education system has been awarded a D plus by Education Week's "Quality Counts 2008" report. Maryland, Massachusetts and New York led all other states earning B's, apparently the highest grade the publication awarded. The national average was a C.

Nevada's grade was made up of a strong C for "standards, assessment and accountability" a D minus for "K-12 achievement" and D plusses for "student success, school finances and student transitions into the work force."

Such assessments should always be looked at with a jaundiced eye because the teachers union regularly lies with statistics in order to bludgeon state legislatures and the federal government into throwing more money at the public education monopoly. In this case I believe that the grades awarded are relatively free from political taint. Education Week is one of several magazines published by Editorial Products in Education ("EPE"), a non-profit organization headquartered in Bethesda, Md. EPE was founded by 15 universities in the 1950s, with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, because of concerns after Sputnick was launched that the Soviet Union was becoming more technologically advanced than the US. Education Week was started by EPE with a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. "Universities," "Carnegie," and "Pew" can imply a leftist bias but I think in this case the assessments are fair.

Some educators' responses were predictable. Churchill County School Superintendent Carolyn Ross lamented: "This state is postured for excellence, but now we are facing budget cuts that put excellence at risk." In short, it's all about money. Washoe County Superintendent Paul Dugan's comments were more refreshing. "Everyone has to take responsibility for this and certainly those of us that do this as a profession have to not be afraid to challenge ourselves, to ask why and try to do something about it," Dugan said. No wailing for cash, just an acknowledgment of the problem and a determination to fix it. Very admirable.

This story tells us a couple of things. First of all if the individual state education systems were graded on a curve the three eastern states would receive an A and Nevada would receive a C plus. Not wonderful but passing.

Secondly the highest grades went to three Eastern Seaboard, old money, yuppie states characterized by universities on every corner. Nevada is a middle-of-the-pack state whose three largest industries are casinos, mining and agriculture. Those businesses do not place high demands on our educational system, either K-12 or university. An unrelated story which also appeared this week was about Barack Obama landing the Nevada Culinary Worker's Union endorsement. The Associated Press report stated that the union has 450,000 members about 45 percent of whom are immigrants. If that's true then over half the employment base in Nevada is union members a huge number of whose kids are English learners. It's tough for Nevada to compete for education quality grades with states that have been around since the Mayflower and whose school children study at Starbucks.

Of course folks like the Churchill County Superintendent will point to education spending per child in the three Eastern states and claim it's all about money but those three states have high state and local income taxes as well as housing costs so teachers and administrators have to gross a lot more money to live as well as they could in Nevada on lower salaries. Something like 90 percent of school budgets are salaries.

Jim Clark is president of Republican Advocates, a vice chair of the Washoe County GOP and a member of the Nevada GOP Central Committee.