The Road Less Traveled.

The article reports on the state of education in Iowa. Iowa appears to have lost some of its academic edge over other states a decade after bucking the trend toward imposing state standards for what students should learn. In the late 1990s, when the nation's governors and business leaders threw their weight behind the push for statewide academic standards, Iowa begged to differ. With its strong tradition of local control and history of comparatively high performance, Iowa felt little compulsion to join the bandwagon.