Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on our blog on August 19th.

If you listen much to Mike Beebe on the campaign trail, you'll hear him say that Arkansas was recently ranked 10th in education among the 50 states.

If you listen much to Jim Keet on the campaign trail, you'll hear him say that Arkansas is ranked 46th in chance for success and 34th in K-12 achievement.

So who's right?

They both are. They're referring to the same study, which was done by a nonpartisan magazine called Education Week. The study used a variety of criterion to rank states in various areas (chance for success and K-12 achievement are among those areas). It also gave the states composite rankings based on how they fared overall.

You can purchase a detailed report on the study at Education Week's site for $4.95, but in case you don't want to get that indepth, here are Arkansas' results.

The overall grade was calculated by averaging all the other grades, so it doesn't appear that any category was given more value than another.

We could give you more details on what went into those scores in the six categories (and we may in the future), but for now we'll simply point out that there's a lot of variance in Arkansas' rankings. The state ranks very high in three areas, in the middle on one, low on one, and very low on one.

So while Beebe is right that Arkansas ranks 10th overall, that seems an oversimplification, given the rankings in individual categories. On the other hand, Keet correctly points out the two areas where the state ranks low, but ignores its high rankings in other areas. Unsurprisingly, both candidates are spinning the numbers for their own benefit.

It's worth noting that the two categories where Arkansas ranks low (K-12 achievement and chance for success) are mostly related to the results of educational policy, i.e., where our education is now. On the other hand, the other categories seem to all relate to the direction of educational policy, i.e., where our education seems to be going.

Make of that what you will. If you're a Keet supporter, you can justly say that four years of the Beebe administration have not resulted in high achievement or opportunity for Arkansas students and graduates. If you're a Beebe supporter, you can respond that the other categories indicate that Arkansas is moving in the right direction, and that the other categories will eventually catch up because of that.

As you can see, evaluating numbers is rarely as easy as a campaign makes it seem. That's why you should never simply believe a candidate's reporting or interpretation of facts without checking with some independent source first. A candidate's job is to win your vote, not to give you a fully informed view of the facts.