Is education chief smarter than an 11th-grader? - MARY STEGMEIR, DesMoines Register

University of Kentucky professor Scott McLeod took to his Twitter account in February to ask Gov. Terry Branstad and state lawmakers whether they’d be willing to take a college readiness exam. McLeod, an Ames resident who considers himself a “standardized testing skeptic,” didn’t get any takers. Instead, Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass tweeted that he’d take the ACT, and dared McLeod to do the same. Armed with trusty No. 2 pencils, the men faced off Monday during a proctored ACT exam at Roosevelt High School. Despite a shared fear of polynomial equations, both finished with scores that mirrored their performance as high school students. Glass received a composite score of 27 out of 36, landing him in the 88th percentile of test-takers. McLeod finished in the 99th percentile with a composite score of 34. Iowa’s average statewide composite school for students in the Class of 2011 was 22.3. The national average was 21.1.