Looking around, it looks like MA beats KS on most metrics. For example, 55% of MA students take the SAT, while only 2% of KS students take the test. There is a reason that MA always ends up at the top of lists that rank public education while KS is much lower. To be fair, KS has been improving in rankings quite a bit, which I agree MA has been unable to do.

MA did pass a personal finance requirement for schools earlier this year. Like many other states it doesn’t have to be, but can be a stand alone course. While it may seem like MA is lagging behind, the majority of those requirements have been put into place within the last 5 or 6 years, so this is pretty new in most places. And a lot of states have done things that seem counter productive, like allowing a personal finance course to replace core math requirements. MA typically lets schools figure out how to implement requirements, so as in most cases the wealthier areas will figure out a high quality way to do this, and the poor areas will do their best to meet the state requirements for the lowest cost, providing less benefits to the students than it should. (Yet another reason that relying so heavily on local resources for public education is a poor choice).