And the 2010 rankings keep coming.... The nation earned a "C" on the 14th annual Education Week report card that measures how well states have delivered a high-quality education to all students, with Maryland earning the best overall grade of any state and Virginia in the top five.
Maryland scored a "B+" and was followed by Massacussetts and New York, both of which earned a "B." Virginia earned a "B-" while most states got grades of "C" or lower.
The annual Quality Counts 2010 report --a publication from Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes the trade magazine Education Week--rated and ranked the 50 states and the District of Columbia in six areas of education performance and policy.
[Note to organizations that rate: Please stop measuring Washington D.C., as if it were a state. It isn't a state, and you know it. If you want it to be included in your state rankings, you can actively support D.C. voting rights and statehood. For the record, the District was ranked 51st, with a "D+" grade.]
The reason people pay attention to the report is that Education Week is a respected publication and there is a lot of interesting data assembled here.
But like with such assessment, don't take any grade as the gospel here: Some of the measures used to grade the states are debatable.
For example the K-12 Achievement Index looks at 18 state achievement measures that are related to reading and math standardized test scores, the results of Advanced Placement exams and high school graduation rates. As I've said before, test scores hardly tell a comprehensive achievement story.
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