With just months to go until the nation鈥檚 overhauled K-12 law goes into effect, state policymakers are still scrambling to firm up the infrastructure for their education systems, under the new blueprint laid out in the Every Student Succeeds Act.
They鈥檙e doing it at a time of political change and policy uncertainty at the national level, with a new team taking the field at the White House鈥攁nd at the U.S. Department of Education鈥攖hat may have its own ideas about how details of the new law play out on the ground.
There鈥檚 plenty about ESSA that remains familiar from the No Child Left Behind Act, the previous version of the half-century-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act. That includes mandatory state testing at certain grade levels, tagging and intervening in low-performing schools, and federal sign-off on state accountability plans.
Keys to ESSA Implementation
May 1, 2018
The Every Student Succeeds Act finally becomes a classroom reality this fall. In this Virtual Summit, Education Week journalists and guests will host discussions about the law鈥檚 requirements. Join us.
But the new law, passed with bipartisan support in Congress just over a year ago, also offers the prospect of new flexibility and a lighter federal rein on how states shape the specifics in such contentious areas as teacher evaluation and the proper weighting of indicators that go into measuring school quality.
Quality Counts 2017 looks at the steps states are taking to turn ESSA鈥檚 blueprint into a finished structure鈥攁nd the challenges of doing it by the time the bell rings for the 2017-18 school year.
Grading the States
Providing context for that process, this 21st edition of Quality Counts paints a somewhat stagnant picture of the nation鈥檚 schools overall, with spot improvements and declines in particular states.
For the third year in a row, the nation receives a C grade鈥攁 score of 74.2 out of 100鈥攐n the Education Week Research Center鈥檚 basket of key indicators.
The national grade and the grades for individual states are based on three custom Research Center indices that look at the role of education in promoting an individual鈥檚 chance for success over the course of a lifetime; overall school spending and equity in funding across districts; and academic performance, including changes over time and poverty-based gaps.
For the third straight year, Massachusetts takes first place, receiving a B grade and a score of 86.5, followed by five other states that received B grades with slightly lower point scores. Nevada was ranked lowest in the nation overall, receiving a D with a score of 65鈥攐ne of three states to receive D scores overall.
But while 34 states fell into the C-minus to C-plus range, several posted notable upticks this year, including Montana, which gained 1.3 points鈥攖he biggest jump nationally. And New Hampshire, which gained about a point in this year鈥檚 report, edged into the ranks of the top five states.
