By most measures, K-12 public education in Massachusetts is in better shape than in other states. We can boast higher scores on standardized tests, more spending per student, and fewer students per teacher. Bay State schools also stand out as having low “overhead,” meaning the share of education spending devoted to administration rather than actual teaching.

But not all students or school districts in Massachusetts have been able to keep up with this pace. The “poverty gap” in standardized test scores — that is, the difference between high- and low-income students — is one of the highest in the nation. And while we have the second-highest percentage of children who get an early start in pre-kindergarten programs (most of them privately run), we’re not much better than the national average in the share of ninth-graders who graduate within four years from public high school.

Such differences make it clear that education reform has not met all its goals, but it’s unclear whether there will be popular support for doing more. We have an unusually high percentage of students who attend private schools and thus have no investment in the public system. And we can’t look for much help from Washington: Partly because of the state’s relative affluence, Massachusetts gets little in federal aid for education.