Education Week 'Quality Counts 2011' Rates U.S. Schools 'Average'

Education Week has published Quality Counts 2011, this year's annual education report card, and its main conclusion is a wide, groaning yawn at our country's educational progress.

The overall grade for our nation was a C (76.3 percent), same grade as last year's 75.9 percent and 2009's 76.2 average.

Schools across the country were graded in the six different areas of policy and performance tracked by the report -- Chance for Success; K-12 Achievement; Standards, Assessments & Accountability; Transitions & Alignment; Teaching Profession; and School Finance.

Although education accounts for approximately one third of the $243 billion in recovery expenditures, with $80.6 billion, the report concluded that the United States has made little progress in improving the opportunities for students to succeed throughout their lives.

State-wise, Maryland topped the chart for the third year in a row, with a B-plus. Massachusetts and New York follow close behind with a B. The majority of states received grades of C-plus or lower.

Visit Education Week to read the full Quality 2011 report and find out how your state did with the interactive state report cards.

Comments

[actionspeaks]

02:06 AM on 01/17/2011

Message to Parents/Students: "Every Child Born Gifted" by Gloria J. Hunt Keith. God must ne the foundation of Education. "Every Child Born Gifted" must be the philosophy within all America(others like USA) school systems. There is no average. Every child, (individually), carries all necessary tools, innately, to be fully and positively productive in this wide-world...Don't settle for "average". It takes far too long to find a definition compatible to the word, "average" as it applies to America's children. Less time is required to convincingly demonstrate, "Every Child (is) Born Gifted".

[Jon Farist]

08:35 PM on 01/14/2011

Seeing this is just sad. But, as a student myself, I know personally how this issue affects me. Which is to say, pretty poorly. I mean, schools nowadays no longer cater to anybody who is not purely average. For me, being on the 99th percentile (in science, vocabulary, and English Language Arts) every single year on the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) would have normally meant I would get my own curriculum, but instead, I get the same thing, which is a cakewalk. However, on the other side of the coin, I also have poor math skills and take a slower class, and get the same mediocre, average, and effectively "one size fits all"-style curriculum. That's where the problem is, by not offering separate curricula for every performance level you alienate anybody who isn't middle of the road. Because the bottom doesn't get the reinforcement they need, they fail. While the top, who need more challenge, often don't get it from curricula that most public schools offer, which causes them to not fully realize their potential.

[abbienormal]

02:22 PM on 01/15/2011

So true.

[Cassandra77]

10:15 PM on 01/13/2011

We will continue to be mediocre until we make the concerted effort as a nation to start educating our young straight out of the womb and stop thinking education starts at 5 years old when kids sign up for school. The human brain is a SPONGE and when we have parents who figuratively feed their kids junk in their formative years you get mediocrity or worse in the classroom.

[farmallboy]

08:53 PM on 01/13/2011

Thank you for the statisitics, but the American education industry is simply not a credible source of information on anything. Routinely, districts across the country proclaim another successful year as nearly all students made progress due to this year's new intitative or program yet national scores on standardized tests have remained stagnant for fourty years. "figures lie and liars figure" best sums up their skill with numbers and propensity to tell the truth.

[Jon Farist]

08:37 PM on 01/14/2011

Exactly, its just plain, old-fashioned cherry-picking. Also F&F.

[giono]

05:59 PM on 01/12/2011

"American Exceptionalism" be damned.....

[roald]

02:55 PM on 01/12/2011

To fix this we will just have to start grading on the curve and set the midpoint of the curve at B+.

[1Woman4Obama]

07:10 PM on 01/12/2011

lol -- I was thinking along the the same lines. Of course average is average -- what else could it possibly be? The only way to make average not average is to change the definition.

[NYCBri]

02:07 PM on 01/12/2011

Parents and the "American culture" are far more at fault for failing children than are teachers. There's no work ethic anymore for kids, no interest in what is being taught, no parents looking over their kids shoulder demanding straight A's. I read the Chnese Mothers article and she's right. That's how my mother was. Get straight A's or else. And guess what? I got straight A's (well, except for calculus).

[poeticjustice4all]

02:47 PM on 01/12/2011

Lucky you. Now unless your mom can parent every child in America -- we still have to educate students as they are.

[verticallychallenged]

04:42 PM on 01/12/2011

Fanned & faved.

[PristineInPink]

05:17 PM on 01/12/2011

I agree with you I don't believe teachers are entirely to blame. Actually I believe the deserve only a small part of the blame. While kids in other countries are spending hours on homework kids in the country are watching Jersey Shore. While a child is at home that is when they should be working, studying. Even if you have great teachers if the kid doesn't do any homework, doesn't pay attention, sits at home watching reality shows all that teaching goes out the window.

[Sol eire]

01:16 PM on 01/12/2011

Finally, the Transition and Alignment section. According to the report, states should require districts to assess readiness of entering students. Why? We have educate them regardless of whether they are meeting the standards set (which parents might not be aware of) and not being able to recite ABCs or not being able to hop on one foot is hardly indicative of being a student with special needs.

“State has program for children not meeting school-readiness expectations”... I thought that was called Kindergarten.

“State requires all high school students to take a college-prep curriculum to earn a diploma.” Why? Some student don’t want to or need to go to college, it’s insulting to think otherwise. What we need in schools are more vocational education programs and students who choose that path shouldn’t be punished or demeaned.
I’m sure there are other things, but whatever, teachers suck and it’s all their fault.

[Sol eire]

01:15 PM on 01/12/2011

A couple of things about the report and people’s interpretation of the report. The report states that, "This year's special theme—the impact of the economy on education" which indicates to me that it is not a condemnation of our educational system but our priorities. But I do have some issues with their reasoning.

The whole “Chance for Success” section. Points (if they use points) are taken off for family income, parent education, parental employment and whether the parents are fluent English speakers, none of these are controlled by the schools. Coming from CA, I don’t think that our diversity should count against us, what should count against us is whether or not our educational system is meeting the needs of ELL students. Are there effective programs in place?

The section also looks at the annual incomes of adults. “Percent of adults with incomes at or above the national median”, disappointing scores, we should all be above the national median! Instead the scores range from 39% to 64% with most scores centered around the 50% mark...interesting, it’s almost like...

In the K12 achievement section, I don’t know enough about the NAEP tests to judge, so I’ll leave that one alone. The school funding section shows where our priorities lie, again not something that schools control. (Cont.)

[teacher39years]

01:04 PM on 01/12/2011

Quality Counts is funded by the "The Pew Charitable Trusts" , which also dedicates 5% of its budget to lobbying efforts. The Nation's Report Card" grades states on how well they follow Educational Reform Dogma. It is more clearly explained in earlier reports, and has been used by Reformers for their own purposes.
http://www.edweek.org/media/ew/qc/archives/QC04full.pdf

[verticallychallenged]

04:45 PM on 01/12/2011

Thank you; I suspected as much.

Teacher 20+ years.

[usorthem3]

11:28 AM on 01/12/2011

A professional sports player makes more in a week than a teacher does in a yr. We have a crisis of what is important for the future of this country. Until it changes, the dumbing down of the populace will continue.

[SaveWillowpark]

11:54 AM on 01/12/2011

My daughters orchestra teacher is teaching band, orchestra and choir for one salary! She is stretched so thin, it is so sad.

[StanAccrington]

10:58 AM on 01/14/2011

My daughter's math teacher is teaching algebra, geometry, fractions and trig. The horror!

[verticallychallenged]

04:46 PM on 01/12/2011

fanned & faved.

[laprofloyd]

10:01 AM on 01/12/2011

I am a teacher of all levels of 11th graders in a very wealthy town in NJ. I think that our higher level students (AP level) can compete with the best students around the world. However, I think our so called "college-prep" (average) students are way below average. I find that many of them want to do the minimum to get by and their parents usually support them in that feeling. They all want a A but they certainly do not want to do the amount of work that an A entails. I would imagine that many of my higher education colleagues would concur.

[SimJack]

10:51 AM on 01/12/2011

I concur. Having taught college undergraduate chemistry and zoology courses which are required by pre-med students who are intensely grade conscious, many of them would go to great lengths to avoid putting in the effort. Instead, offers of money and, in a couple of cases involving female students even sex, were made. Where do these values come from? Their parents, peers and our society at large which seems to put little stock and value on education and honest hard work. A great teacher can only do so much with students that have, perhaps through no fault of their own, diminished character.

[samilli3]

03:34 PM on 01/12/2011

bless you for your work

[Jo-Anne Gross]

09:14 AM on 01/12/2011

“There is a crisis in American middle and high schools: one in four adolescents cannot read well enough to identify the main idea in a passage or
understand informational text. This keeps them from succeeding in challenging high school coursework and from graduating from high school prepared for the option of postsecondary education.
But there is a strong body of researchbased
knowledge that is available about adolescent literacy. This research demonstrates that we do know enough about adolescent literacy to make positive changes today. We know a great deal
about the literacy needs of adolescents
and the teaching practices that are effective with them. We know that skills such as decoding and fluency lead to better reading comprehension. We know that motivation and engagement are
critical elements for adolescents. We know that English-language learners face additional challenges when learning to read and write well in English…..........”

The reformers never stress the research-they throw mud and money at the wall-more aspirin won`t help when penicillin is needed!

[verticallychallenged]

04:48 PM on 01/12/2011

Fan # 2.

[Nosybear]

09:01 AM on 01/12/2011

The report cards are in, America, and we're not Lake Wobegon.

[MG Metiva]

09:48 AM on 01/12/2011

Because too many states are too poverty ridden to be above-average.

[SaveWillowpark]

11:58 AM on 01/12/2011

Too many are stuck in survival mode. It's hard to keep your mind on your work if your worried about your folks being able to hang on to your house or buy you a winter coat. I wish we were Lake Wobegon.

[fozzi58]

11:37 AM on 01/12/2011

I agree. However, you can also thank policies like "Leave every child behind" for forcing the education system to test every student the same way. I saw a film about that exact type of method of teaching. Every student "learns" the same way and all are tested to the same level. However, I couldn't understand the narration because it was in German...

[teacher39years]

11:31 AM on 01/13/2011

Like Big Macs coming off a line. All we'll need is McTeachers to run the assembly line.