Having Lived in the Midwest and CA, I strongly suspect this is some kind of artifact of CA doing something better. Either schools in CA are harder as in teachi

Having Lived in the Midwest and CA, I strongly suspect this is some kind of artifact of CA doing something better. Either schools in CA are harder as in teaching much more, CA is counting more kids, CA is failing kids who didn't academically succeed, or MO might not be tracking kids from certain areas, MO might be pushing kids along and passing them out when they don't know the material. It could be as simple as when schools lose track of a kid CA might default to "did not graduate" and MO defaults to "don't care not tracking". Live in each place for a week and tell me the average education level in the lower midwest is on par. I know that one person isn't a statistical sample, but it is so easy to reproduce and so many people have done it seeing the same results.