Quality Counts grades all 50 states and the country, too, on what’s known as the Chance-for-Success Index, resulting in “a snapshot of a person’s prospect of successful outcomes over a lifetime, from early childhood to adulthood and the working world.”
To accomplish this feat, the EdWeek Research Center collected the most recent U.S. Census Bureau federal data, the National Association of Education Progress (the nation’s report card), and other sources, basing the rankings on these 13 separate indicators:
- Family Income
- Parent Education
- Parent Employment
- Linguistic Integration
- Preschool Enrollment
- Kindergarten Enrollment
- Elementary Reaching Achievement
- Middle School Mathematics Achievement
- High School Graduation Rate
- Young Adult Education
Overall, America earned a score of just 79.5% (C+) out of a possible 100 points, with an “A” ranging from 93 to 100, an “A- “from 90 to 92, and so on, with “F” 59 and lower.
The top-ranked states were:
MA: 91.6 (A-)
NJ: 89.6 (B+)
NH: 87.01 (B+)
CT: 87.5 (B+)
MN: 87.4 (B+)
These five states ranked at the very bottom:
OK: 73.4 (C)
WV: 72.1 (C-)
LA: 72.0 (C-)
NV: 70.2 (C-)
NM: 69.0 (D+)
As for those that improved the most from 2020 to 2021:
DE: 80.4 (B-) Up 2.6
RI: 82.1 (B-) Up 2.4
NM: 69.0 (D+) Up 1.8
AL: 75.4 (C) Up 1.8
ID: 77.5 (C+) Up 1.4
And those that saw the biggest declines…
VT: 85.8 (B) Down -2.0
ND: 83.7 (B) Down -1.1
ME: 81.2 Down -0.7
CT: 87.5 Down: -0.6
SD: 81.8 Down -0.5
This, despite all the government’s tinkering and spending… ~ Carol