Education Week
Yesterday, the editors of Education Week released the latest in their annual series of statistical analyses dubbed "Quality Counts." This year's focus is "special education in an era of standards" - a timely topic, considering that Congress is still struggling to reauthorize IDEA and that the Education Department recently issued new regulations for how to handle severely disabled children within NCLB state testing programs. (See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=126#1583.) We won't claim yet to have read all 150 outsized pages, but it's clear that they do a fine job of setting forth the major issues faced by those who yearn to reconcile special needs with uniform standards. The data reveal vast gaps in the academic achievement of special-ed students vis-??-vis other children (and nobody needs reminding that the other children mostly aren't doing so well themselves). Nor is NCLB the only source of this tension; should disabled youngsters, for instance, have to pass statewide high-school graduation tests? (Half the states allow them to receive diplomas without meeting regular graduation requirements.)
The final third of this report offers a wealth of data on other K-12 education issues, provided both in multi-state tables and state-specific profiles. It's organized under four major headings: standards/accountability, teacher quality, school climate, and resources. You'll find progress on a number of fronts but huge distances yet to travel on others. (For example: fewer than half the states require middle-school teachers to pass subject-matter tests to earn licenses. Fewer than one third of high-school students are taking "upper level" science courses. Despite all the fuss about big schools, just 30 percent of high schoolers are enrolled in schools smaller than 900.) By and large, you'll find less attention this year to irrelevant indicators beloved of the school establishment (e.g. accreditation of teacher training programs). But when you get to the section on "resources," you'll spot some familiar follies, such as Education Week's weird attachment to something called the "McLoone Index." To my knowledge, nobody else uses this odd calculation ("the ratio of the total amount spent on pupils below the median to the amount that would be needed to raise all students to the median per-pupil expenditure in the state") and any jurisdiction that tried to base school-finance policy on it would drown in Lake Wobegon alongside others who dream of everyone rising above the average.
You can find Quality Counts 2004 on line at http://www.edweek.org/sreports/qc04/, but, given its bulk and unwieldiness, you'll likely want your own hard copy, which you can obtain by ordering it at http://www.edweek.org/products/special-reports/.
