2008 Quality Counts – Grading the Education Systems of our States – Is your state improving?

The 12th annual edition of Education Week’s Quality Counts continues the cradle-to-career framework launched in last year’s report. But it also reintroduces some of the categories in which we have graded states in the past, though some of the indicators and the grading have changed. The cradle-to-career perspective emphasizes the connections between K-12 education and other systems with which it intersects: preschool education, other social and economic institutions, and further education and training.

To emphasize this approach, the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center last year created two new state-performance measures: the Chance-for-Success Index and the K-12 Achievement Index. These indicators, respectively, capture key learning foundations and outcomes at various stages in a person’s life and the performance of the states’ public schools. Coupled with that heightened attention to outcomes, the 2007 edition of Quality Counts examined a series of policies that states could pursue to better align public education from preschool to postsecondary education and into the workplace.

Even as we introduced those new measures last year, we put two of our traditional policy categories on hold: school finance and efforts to strengthen the teaching profession. We spent the past year revising those indicators to ensure the report reflects the field’s best and most current thinking. Both categories have returned for this year’s report. Indeed, teaching is the special theme of Quality Counts 2008.

Full Report: http://www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2008/01/10/index.html

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Idaho ranked worst for education

By Betsy Z. Russell

Idaho is tied for last place in the nation for its education quality, according to a new study published Wednesday by Education Week.

The ranking showed Idaho, with a grade of D+, in a six-way tie for last place with Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon and the District of Columbia. Washington scored at the national average, earning a “C.”

Full Story: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=13109