At Editorial Projects in Education, we were starting to wonder whether the reception to the latest edition of our Quality Counts report and its Chance-for-Success Index had been a bit too positive. Fortunately, Gadfly's recent editorial (and a subsequent piece in the Rocky Mountain News) calling attention to the error of our ways snapped us out of our happy reverie.
I would like to answer a couple questions I believe the editorial's author, Liam Julian, posed and then went on to answer incorrectly. He assumed that the Chance-for-Success Index is just saying that demography is destiny, and he lamented that Quality Counts had abandoned standards-based reform.
First thing's first. We do not now believe, nor have we ever believed, that demography is destiny. To suggest such was certainly not the intent behind the report as a whole or the Index in particular. Nor do we feel that a more-than-cursory perusal of Quality Counts will leave readers with that impression.
The goal of this year's report, in very general terms, was to think about education within a much broader perspective. We do this by examining the ways in which education plays out through a person's lifetime. That's the "From Cradle to Career" part of the report's title. In more concrete terms, we also wanted to illustrate how a person's life opportunities could differ across the nation owing to state-by-state disparities in the foundations for learning that are laid during childhood, the performance of education systems during the formal school years, and opportunities to use a good education in a state's labor market during adulthood. If you combine those goals, a whole lot of data, and some non-trivial statistical gyrations, then you get our Chance-for-Success Index.
Among the 13 indicators that make up the Index, we examine several social and economic conditions in the household during the childhood years--parental education, income, employment, and English fluency. Does this mean that a child will necessarily start school behind the curve if his or her parents are poorly educated, work sporadically or in a low-paying job, or don't speak English very well? Absolutely not. But is there a solid research base linking these factors with readiness to learn when children enter school? Absolutely. That's why we focused on these issues.
Now, a critic (like, say, Gadfly) might suggest that it's not fair to evaluate a state based on factors (like, say, demographics) over which education systems and policymakers have no control. My response would be that, sure, state policymakers may not be able to wave a magic wand to get more "favorable" demographics. But state policy leadership should be all about looking for solutions that mitigate the known impacts that disadvantages such as poverty have on their children.
Well, that critic might reply, schools can't fix poverty on their own. And that really is the whole point of our report. Of course they can't. But public schools are responsible for educating all children who enter their doors and for providing them with the kinds of skills they need to successfully continue on to further education, work, and citizenship. Much of our report, in fact, is devoted to the proposition that states can strengthen K-12 schooling through policies that link it more closely with early childhood education, postsecondary systems, and the workforce.
As a final response to the demography-is-destiny accusation, I offer an empirical example. Those who read the report carefully will find that Chance-for-Success doesn't tell one single story. It tells 51 unique stories, for the states plus the District of Columbia. One can find instances where two states--like California and New Mexico--start off in very similar demographic positions. However, they diverge when it comes to performance during the schooling years and opportunities for adults to reap the rewards of a good education in the labor market. California fares considerably better in the end. Had demography really predestined the outcome, the ends of both state stories would have been one and the same.
The response to Julian's second question--Why isn't Quality Counts looking at standards-based reform any more?--is pretty simple. We are. The report still tracks over 70 indicators in the areas of standards, assessments, and accountability. And although we aren't providing letter grades this year, we do rank states on a set of core standards policies in our online state highlights reports. So for standards-lovers, Quality Counts still has plenty of red meat to dig into. (Oh, and for those who would argue that the real issue is how schools perform, we have a K-12 State Achievement Index, too.)
Of course, capturing state-level policy efforts around standards in a meaningful way is a much different task in 2007 than it was in 1997 when Quality Counts first hit the newsstands. As times change, Quality Counts has stayed relevant by evolving alongside the standards movement, and it will continue to do so.
Christopher B. Swanson
Director, Editorial Projects in Education Research Center