About These Reports
This year marks the tenth anniversary of Editorial Project in Education’s annual Quality Counts report. As always, Quality Counts examines the state of state educational policymaking using a unique combination of original state data and in-depth journalistic case studies.
This 10th anniversary issue – Quality Counts at 10: A Decade of Standards-Based Reform – also takes a special look back at standards-based reform in American education over the past ten years. Quality Counts 2006 features original analyses examining trends in both state policy and student achievement, case studies investigating seven states’ unique experiences with the standards movement, and commentaries from five leading voices in educational reform and policy. In short, the report takes stock of the progress states have made on standards-based education as well as its promise for improving the nation’s public schools moving into the movement’s second decade.
Quality Counts 2006 continues to track key educational information and grade the states on their policy efforts. This year’s report examines more than 100 indicators in the areas of: standards and accountability, efforts to improve teacher quality, school climate, and resource equity and educational spending. But for the first time, the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center has produced detailed individualized state-by-state reports to complement the 50-state perspective of Quality Counts. These new reports replace and expand on the state summaries that appeared in previous print editions of Quality Counts.
The new State Highlights Reports assemble key findings in an accessible format that allows readers to examine a particular state’s performance on this year’s indicators as well as the progress it has made over time. For most indicators, national results are also provided as a benchmark against which state performance can be gauged.
