Thomas B. Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children?

November 1, 2006

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children? appraises each state according to thirty indicators across three major categories: student achievement for low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students; achievement trends for these same groups over the last 10-15 years; and the state's track record in implementing bold education reforms. It finds that just eight states can claim even moderate success over the past 15 years at boosting the percentage of their poor or minority students who are at or above proficient in reading, math or science. In addition, most states making significant achievement gains--including California, Delaware, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas--are national leaders in education reform, indicating that solid standards, tough accountability, and greater school choice can yield better classroom results.

View the press release for this report

Contents

Executive Summary

 

Welcome to the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's first ever comprehensive analysis of education reform and results in the 50 states. For each of them, this report examines:

  1. Student achievement, with a focus on poor and minority students;
  2. Achievement trends since the early 1990s for these same students; and
  3. Reform efforts centering on curriculum, standards, and school choice.

 
Student Achievement Circa 2005

The Foundation developed its student achievement grades based primarily on results from the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading, mathematics, and science for low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students. But a quarter of each state's grade is based on minority high school graduation rates and statewide passing rates on Advanced Placement (AP) exams. The focus is on poor and minority students because historically they have been most likely to fall through school system cracks, and are the focus of nationwide gap-closing efforts. (Detailed information about our indicators and why we chose them is available in the body of the report.)

The achievement results are bleak. The average state grade is D; three states flunked, and none earned better than D+. But these low marks were not the result of an impossible grading scheme. Were the same scale applied to white students, the national average would be a B. 

That, in a nutshell, is the achievement gap in the United States today. For example, only 7 percent of African-American eighth graders are at or above proficient in science and just 8 percent have reached that level in math. On the other hand, 38 percent of white eighth graders are at or above proficiency in science and 39 percent in math.  

Still, some states do substantially better by their poor and minority students than others; the stronger-or at least less weak-performers include such large, diverse states as Virginia, New Jersey, and Maryland. In Virginia, for example, 26 percent of Hispanic fourth graders are at or above proficient in reading, and 22 percent of Hispanic eighth graders reach that level in science. (Of course, these are still desperately low numbers, hardly worth celebrating.)

While southern states dominate the bottom of the list, there are a few surprises there too. Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, and Rhode Island all rank especially low in the academic performances of their disadvantaged students. In Illinois, for example, only 9 percent of black fourth graders are at or above proficient in reading, and just 10 percent of low-income eighth graders have reached that level in math. This means that most of the state's poor and minority children are ill-prepared for success in later life.


Achievement Trends

Amid the current woeful results, there is some good news: 31 states have made at least minimal progress over the past decade and a half. The Foundation examined whether the states made statistically significant progress in getting more poor, African-American, or Hispanic students over the "proficiency" bar on NAEP between the time it started participating in that assessment and 2005. (State-level math and reading testing commenced in 1992 and science in 1996, but participation was optional until 2003 and some states came on board later than others.)

Eight states-California, Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Washington-showed the strongest gains over that period, making statistically significant progress in at least two subjects (reading, math, or science) and by at least two subgroups (African-American, Hispanic, or low-income students); or significant progress by all three subgroups and in at least two subjects. At the other end of the spectrum, twelve states made no statistically significant progress with these populations at all. Five of them-Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin-also have some of the lowest achievement scores in the country, making their lack of progress all the more troubling. 

 
Education Reform

Based on data for nine indicators in three categories (curricular content, standards-based reform, and school choice), Fordham's education reform grade provides a glimpse at each state's aggressiveness in improving its schools in recent years. (The Foundation would have examined state efforts at deregulating schools and educators as well, but there is so little movement on this front that reliable data are unavailable.)

Here, three states earn honor grades-Arizona, California, and New Mexico-while half receive D's or F's. The national average is a C-. The cellar is occupied by Vermont-once considered to be a forerunner in education reform due to its innovative assessments and standards. 

In general, states' strongest performances came in the standards-based reform category, where the average grade is a C and ten states earned B's, undoubtedly the result of pressure brought by NCLB and close to two decades of state-level attention to this reform strategy. In many cases, however, the standards and curricular expectations underlying standards-based reform are themselves inadequate, as indicated by states' average grade of C- in curricular content. Most states received their worst marks (D+ on average) for school choice, with 31 earning D's or F's; unfortunately, options such as charter schools are still scarce in most places. 

Interestingly, the top ten school reform states also made at least some progress-and in five cases, moderate progress-in boosting the achievement of their poor and minority students over the last decade or so. This is a welcome sign suggesting that setting clear, rigorous standards in the core subjects of the academic curriculum; holding schools accountable for helping all their students reach them; and giving parents meaningful choices appear to be a winning combination, especially for our most disadvantaged students. Which makes it all the more tragic that half the states in the nation are missing the bus on education reform.

 


 


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