Walter Russell Mead has a post titled Blue State Schools: The Shame Of A Nation, link via Instapundit, where there's some discussion.

Mead writes

When it come to excellence in education, red states rule – at least according to a panel of experts assembled by Tina Brown’s Newsweek. Using a set of indicators ranging from graduation rate to college admissions and SAT scores, the panel reviewed data from high schools all over the country to find the best public schools in the country.

The results make depressing reading for the teacher unions: the very best public high schools in the country are heavily concentrated in red states.

I'm a political conservative myself, and I don't like teachers unions either, but I'm afraid that Mead, [Email him] in his discussion of how "South Carolina is kicking New England’s rear end when it comes to producing great public schools", has forgotten that educational outcomes are driven almost entirely by demographics.

But no one is going to write a post entitled "Blue State Demographics, The Shame Of A Nation"