Quality Counts 2018: Grading the States
A Report Card for States and the Nation on K-12 Education
January 17, 2018

Education Week’s annual state-by-state assessment of public education paints a portrait of middling performance overall with patches of high achievement, along with perennial struggles to improve on the part of states mired at the bottom. This is the first of three data-driven Quality Counts packages this year exploring distinct aspects of the performance of America’s public schools.
For our second installment of Quality Counts on the nation’s school finance performance, click here. For our third and final installment of Quality Counts 2018 on how states rank on academic achievement and on students' chance for success, click here.
- Accountability How Do You Go About Calculating Student Success? It's ComplicatedWhen it comes to gauging the quality of the nation’s education system, academic achievement and a wide range of non-school factors that affect the opportunity for lifelong success all form part of the picture.College & Workforce Readiness Here's What's Behind the Nation's 'C' Grade on Student AchievementThe nation has made modest improvements in student academic achievement in the past decade, but results among states are uneven, according to a new ranking system.Accountability When It Comes to Setting Students Up for Success, Nation Earns a 'C'State scores come from an Education Week Research Center analysis of education-related opportunities, as well as social and economic conditions.Every Student Succeeds Act Is It Time for the American Approach to Assessment to Change?The U.S. tests its students more than most nations, but is the deluge of data providing the information schools need?Early Childhood The Keys to Student Success Include Starting Early and Following ThroughStates are concentrating their policy efforts on early-childhood education as well as transitioning young adults from high school to college.States State Grades on K-12 Achievement: Map and RankingsExamine the grades and scores that states and the nation earned on the K-12 Achievement Index in Quality Counts 2018, along with how they scored on a host of indicators that go into those rankings.States State Grades on Chance for Success: Map and RankingsExamine the grades and scores that states and the nation earned on the Chance for Success Index in Quality Counts 2018, along with how they scored on a host of socioeconomic and other indicators that go into those rankings.States Sources & NotesHere's a quick and easy guide to the grading scale and each of the indicators that go into making up the 50-state grades for K-12 achievement and students' chance for success.