I find the quality of the states education system embarrassing.   

Iowa has been top 5 in the nation in SAT (or ACT?), virtually every year.  Then you have a fine Big 10 college with a advanced hospital complex at Iowa and and ISU campus booming with new construction and growing engineering and tech fields.   *The Asian students are hugely disproportionate part of the engineering majors - a good indication or meritocracy I would say.

This is not to say Oregon and OSU don't have some outstanding departments, I'm sure they do.   But they also go out of the state of Oregon for talented students and higher tuitions.

Yet Oregon's goal is 100% graduation rate.    That makes me so angry.   It's fantasy, not reality and is worthless as a process measure.  What is does encourage in easy standards and outright cheating to show improvements.    Then you have parents who don't want their children to take test to measure competence.  Perfect fit.