YOU DECIDE: Which is doing a better job of public education, Arizona or Kentucky? Similar numbers of children attend school in the two states. About a quarter of them live in single-parent families. Arizona has more minority youngsters, but Kentucky has more below the poverty line. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 1992 and 1994, the two states had nearly identical (low) scores. Yet Arizona spends a thousand dollars less per pupil on public education than Kentucky, an overall difference of some $ 400 million a year.