The third and final installment of “Quality Counts 2019” offers a comprehensive report card on the nation’s K-12 system, including A-F grades and rankings for each of the states based on a wide range of academic, school finance, and socioeconomic factors.
The report, based on analysis by the Education Week Research Center, sums up how well the nation and the states do on assuring bright prospects for success over the course of a lifetime; how much they spend on schools and how fairly that money is distributed; and the outcomes reflected by indicators such as test scores and graduation rates.
To catch up on the first installment of Quality Counts 2019, click here. For the second installment, click here.
New Jersey takes the top spot in the newly released "Quality Counts 2019," the 23rd annual report card of state education systems issued by the Education Week Research Center, while the nation as a whole once again earns a C grade despite some jockeying for position among individual states.
The report, the third of three installments, synthesizes 39 indicators that capture a range of school finance, academic achievement, and socioeconomic factors that affect the quality of state school systems.
Other than a shuffle at the top, the final grades reflect some perennial patterns. In the category of academic achievement alone, no state topped Massachusetts' 88.4, and 44 states scored a C or lower. And top-ranking states are largely clustered in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, while Southern states with high poverty rates dominate the lower rankings.
The latest top-to-bottom grades show just how stubborn K-12 improvement challenges can be. But a deeper look at the data also shows bright spots even among some low-performing states, as well as a photo-finish for New Jersey, as it came in number one for the first time.
Keeping Score
The national score of 75.6 represents an increase of 0.5 points over last year, when the nation also earned a C on the summative report card. The slight uptick in the numerical score reflects modest gains in each of the three report card categories. But the result also continues a trend of mediocre performance, with large disparities between high- and low-scoring states.
New Jersey's first-place position with a B-plus and a score of 87.8 ends Massachusetts' four-year reign atop the Quality Counts rankings, in which Massachusetts also earned a B-plus. Massachusetts fell short of the top spot by just a few hundredths of a point on the combined scores.
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