Despite the attention focused on poor and minority students by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, most states are doing a poor job of narrowing achievement gaps, concludes a âreport cardâ released last week.
Issued by the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank, the report gives states an average grade of D on student achievement. It argues that progress has been negligible since the 1983 release of A Nation at Risk, the landmark report warning of a ârising tide of mediocrityâ in American public schools.
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âStudent achievement in the U.S. remains essentially flat even as the demands of a 21st-century economy stiffen and the education systems of other lands outpace ours,â the report says. âThe U.S. urgently needs to become a nation in which every child learns to his or her full potential between kindergarten and 12th grade.â
Like Education Weekâs annual Quality Counts report, Fordhamâs reportâwhich the authors describe as âunabashedly judgmentalââgives states letter grades, but it uses different indicators.
Each state received a student-achievement grade, based primarily on results from the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading, mathematics, and science for African-American students, Hispanic students, and those from low-income families. Children from those groups on average trail on standardized tests compared with their white and Asian peers.
A quarter of the grade was also calculated using high school graduation rates for African-Americans, Hispanics, and children from low-income families, as well as statewide passing rates on Advanced Placement tests for students from those groups.
Of the 50 states, most made Dâs, three made Fâs, and six had insufficient data for the foundation to calculate a grade.
A new âreport cardâ finds states have made too little progress in raising achievement by African-American, Hispanic, and low-income students.
*Click image to see the full chart.
SOURCE: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
The report was originally released Oct. 25, but was withdrawn from the groupâs Web site after errors in data were discovered. Still, the recalculations led to only minor changes.
In a press release, foundation President Chester E. Finn Jr. said the results dispute some of the rhetoric from state leaders about improving student performance.
âMany state officials have claimed credit for gains in student achievement,â he said. âBut this study casts doubt on many such claims. In reality, no state has made the kind of progress thatâs required to close Americaâs vexing achievement gaps and help all children prepare for life in the 21st century. Nor are most states making the bold reforms most likely to change this reality.â
Gloria Dopf, the Nevada education departmentâs deputy superintendent of instruction, research, and evaluative services, said she understands that researchers donât have much choice but to use NAEP when comparing states. But the report ignores improvements in student performance on Nevadaâs tests, which are aligned with NAEP, she argued.
âWe do have performance gaps, but we are systemically working on those gaps, unlike the Fordham article indicated,â she said. â[The report] was very harsh, and not really reflecting some of the strategies and reform initiatives in the state.â
âNo-Nonsense Reformsâ
States also received an âeducation reformâ grade, which focuses on state efforts in the areas of curriculum content, standards-based reform, and school choice. In those areas, states donât look so bad. The average score is C-minus, and three statesâArizona, California, and New Mexicoâeven received a B-minus.
To some extent, the states scoring near the top in the education reform categoryâCalifornia, Georgia, Massachusetts, and New York, for exampleâare among the same ones that ranked near the top in the foundationâs âState of State Standardsâ report, issued in August.
In the profile on California, the state scores points from Fordham for leading the nation in the number of charter schools in operation, hiring alternatively certified teachers, and eliminating bilingual education.
âIf the no-nonsense reforms currently in place retain their stature in the stateâs education establishment, the stateâs school system could, in a few years, become a source of pride instead of the punch line for a bad joke,â the report says.
Hilary McLean, a spokeswoman for the California education department, said state officials were pleased that Fordham recognized âour high standards,â but added that working on closing the achievement gaps will be a major focus of the department over the next year.
Vermont, which the report called the âcellar dweller,â was the only state to receive an F for education reform. The report cites the stateâs opposition to charter schools and a high school exit exam.
âIn this small state of less than 600,000 people, 97 percent of whom are white, the idea that schools must be âreformedâ does not go down well with folks,â the authors write.
The report, which the foundation plans to issue annually, concludes by saying that even though some people are looking to the federal government to improve achievement among poor and minority students, the responsibility rests ultimately with the statesââevery one of which has constitutionally obligated itself to educate its citizens, every one of which has created a âsystemâ for carrying out that obligation, every one of which sets most of the ground rules by which that system operates, and almost every one of which provides the lionâs share of the funding for that system.â
