Americans like to think they’re the best when it comes to just about everything, when measured against other nations. While we’re certainly the richest, most freedom loving, and pretty much the bodyguards for the poor and defenseless, we’ve known for years that we’re certainly not the smartest country on earth.
Recently, we ranked 28th when it came to math and science scores, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
We’re really smart, people. Just not the smartest. And we’re working on it.
We thought it would be cool to align each state’s educational attainment to a country of similar intelligence.
We used the U.S. Census to get the numbers on each state’s high school graduation rate, and then compared those numbers to the education index of each country in the world, provided by the United Nations Development Program
Many things stand out. For instance, most of the northeast – considered the ‘smartest’ region in the United States – is very similar to Europe’s education levels. Check out the map below.
Advertisement. Article Continues Below.
Jen MacLean