Here’s the background on a letter to the editor I submitted to the Lewiston Morning Tribune (see far below).
Let’s start with a pitch to subscribe to the Tribune. Supporting local, independent newsrooms is important
Now, the editorial that inspired the letter:
The Tribune often criticizes the Idaho Legislature’s spending (or lack thereof), especially regarding Education and Health.
I think it's fair to say that the paper will glom onto pretty much any article, any report disparaging the state in that regard for both reprinting and in support of editorials like the one above.
In the matter of the new Kids Count Data Book I happened to spot the magician’s trick: it directs attention to quartiles and rankings assigned to the states rather than percentiles and performance based on the raw scores the states received.
As per the race metaphor I use in the letter two runners might finish 36th and 31st in a race in a tight group with just a second or so between each finish. On the other hand, the 36th and 37th runner could finish with many seconds or minutes between their respective crossings of the finish line.
31, 36, 44 are the rankings but, in our metaphor, the Kids Count scores are the runners' times.
Kids Count does share both. Here’s the Education rankings and scores:
And the overall rankings and scores:
You’ve probably already spotted how close are many of the scores.
I did and used Google Sheets to determine their means and standard deviations. That confirmed for me that a normal bell curve with comparison to school grade ranges for the states would be useful in understanding these data.
With the help of Google Gemini I produced bell curve charts for the scores (it returned somewhat low-rez PNG images, apologies for any issues in their quality.
I then eyeballed in markers for the scores of states featured in the editorial.
Finally, I overlaid an image depicting where grades fall on a normal curve. Doing so enabled discussing the states’ performance in a meaningful way for the general public.
Here’s the Education graphic:
…and Overall:
Idaho and its neighbors are, to put it colloquially, “fair to middlin’” states.
Idaho Education News pegs the difference between Idaho’s per pupil spending compared to Oregon and Washington at about $7K. So:
310,299 Idaho K-12 students × $7,000 = $2,172,093,000
$2.17B seems like a lot for Idaho to spend just to “drag” up its scores from C-minus to C on some advocacy group’s report card.
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The letter:
Imagine a marathon race: the best runners finish, then the very good runners, then the great mass of good and pretty good runners, then the game but slow runners, last come the poor runners.
The marathon is an excellent metaphor for a bell curve.
Why bring up the bell curve?
It illuminates Marty Trillhaase’s misstep in analyzing Idaho’s performance in the 2026 Kids Count Data book (7/5/26).
Trillhaase should have looked at the report’s scores not its rankings (https://bit.ly/4p4RpvW).
Why?
The Kids Count Data scores are like the runners’ times, rankings are just the order in which the runners cross the finish line.
Idaho, Washington, and Oregon are all among the “good and pretty good” runners.
For Education they scored the equivalent of a C-minus on a report card — room for improvement but certainly not flunking.
On the overall Kids Count scores these states get a solid C with just four points separating Washington and Idaho.
Utah earns a C+/B- but spends just $180.00 more per student than Idaho.
Trillhaase’s hypothesis is “underfunded schools are dragging Idaho down” and “investments in education (i.e. more money)” is the remedy.
However, as the Kids Count scores show, Idaho could spend as much as its neighbors and still be somewhere in the C range.
The cost for that? About $2.71 billion.
Trillhaase’s hypothesis is not supported.
Idaho’s education system could do better but a fixation on finances led Marty Trillhaase’s comments off-course.
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