WATERLOO - Iowa ranks first nationally in educating its children, based on indicators of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Or at least that's how the state has chosen to define itself, says a Washington education policy think tank.

Education Sector last week released "The Pangloss Index: How States Game the No Child Left Behind Act." Iowa and Wisconsin were first in a composite index of state rankings using annual reports submitted to the federal government detailing progress under the legislation. The next three states on the list are Nebraska, Kansas and Alabama.

This is the second year the nonpartisan organization has compiled the rankings. Last year, Wisconsin was first and Iowa was second. The index is named for the character in Voltaire's Candide who insisted - in the face of all evidence to the contrary - that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

Measures such as test scores, the percent of schools and districts making adequate yearly progress, high school graduation and dropout rates, school violence ratings, and teacher qualifications are used to create the index. Top-ranked states showed the best results.

"The message, I think, that Iowa is sending is 'We're doing well,'" said report author Kevin Carey, the research and policy manager at Education Sector. "Iowa is certainly doing better than average, but it's probably not number one."

No Child Left Behind requires states to improve achievement until students reach 100 percent proficiency in 2013-14, but Carey contends that is not happening.

"States have actually been making it easier every year," he said, by requesting changes to their accountability systems and receiving approval from the U.S. Department of Education.

"Iowa, like a lot of states, has chosen to do certain things to essentially reduce the likelihood of a school not making adequate yearly progress," said Carey.

Tom Deeter, an assessment consultant with the Iowa Department of Education, said the state is just following the law, though. The suggestion that Iowa is gaming the system "is really not fair, because we are using the flexibility that we are finding in the law to protect our schools and give them an opportunity to improve," he said.

Carey objects to Iowa's use of a 98 percent "confidence interval" to keep schools from falling short of progress goals, which is similar to a margin of error used in opinion polls. He argues their use does not make sense because schools are testing all students rather than sampling a smaller group.

"There are no issues of sampling error to account for," he writes.

Deeter said this technique is needed because No Child Left Behind compares the same grade level from year-to-year, which means different groups of students each time.

"The kids that are in this year's group are different than the group that was tested last year," he said. "Because all kids are different, there's going to be some error."

Patrick Clancy, Waterloo Community Schools' associate superintendent for educational and student services, argued the need for a margin of error because tests represent "one day of one week" and any number of factors could affect a students' performance.

"We're taking a single snapshot of a child," said Clancy, and then using the information to make a lot of judgments.

Carey also takes issue with how Iowa school districts are deemed "in need of improvement." Scores are averaged separately at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Those that fall short of progress goals for two years in the same subject at each level are named in need of improvement. This makes it more difficult for a district to fall short of progress goals than with the other approach, which simply averages scores across the district as a whole.

"They could get worse from one year to the next and still be making 'progress,'" said Carey.

But Deeter said districts had complained the "in need of improvement" designation was not fair if all levels weren't falling short of the goals. That means the problem is not systemic, he said, and the label is not deserved.

Clancy took issue with the law's overemphasis on sanctioning schools and districts that fall short of progress goals.

"The sanctions approach is the wrong approach for an improvement effort to have," he said, noting no federal assistance is available for schools until they fall short of goals. "We could do a more proactive approach rather than a consequences approach."

So where does Carey believe Iowa should be ranked?

"There's no way for me to kind of reverse the accountability process." But he looks to the testing done in every state on the National Assessment of Educational Progress as the best comparison measure.

For example, he compared Iowa's and Massachusetts' NAEP achievement levels for fourth- and eighth-graders in reading and math since 1992. While Massachusetts is the highest-performing state on the NAEP, Carey said it holds itself to far tougher standards than most. As a result, it is 46th on the Pangloss Index.

"Iowa did better across the board (in 1992)," he said. "Fifteen years later, Massachusetts is better across the board."

The change "suggests to me that the state is not challenging itself but just kind of going about its business."

Contact Andrew Wind at (319) 291-1507 or andrew.wind@wcfcourier.com.