Education Week’s Quality Counts Report

Posted by on January 23, 2011

Needs improvement

Education Week has released its 15th Quality Counts report, evaluating the status of states’ educational performance and policymaking. Subtitled Uncertain Forecast, it gives summative scores and letter grades to each state, as well as providing analysis of its Chance-for-Success Index and K-12 Achievement Index. Its overall findings point to relatively few large-scale education policy changes at the state level that can be attributed to the economic downturn, which officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. Many states have enacted modest policy modifications to give districts greater flexibility, such as broadening eligible uses of funds previously reserved for particular programs or groups, or loosening regulations on length of the school year, week, or day. Yet by and large, reforms have not been not fundamental and structural. In terms of letter grades, for the third year in a row, Maryland was top-ranked, earning an overall grade of B-plus. Massachusetts and New York each followed with a B. Most states fell somewhere in the middle, with 36 states earning grades between a C-minus and a C-plus. At the bottom end, the District of Columbia, Nebraska, and South Dakota received a D-plus. The nation overall earned a C, same as last year.

Read more and see the report: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/01/13/16stateofthestates.h30.html?tkn=QMBFexNkgmIADQ8yy46X0FWBPjrxaISWYHzJ&cmp=clp-ecseclips