Education Week - January 22, 2020 - 10

QUALITY COUNTS 2020: Chance for Success

Setting the Stage
For a Lifetime
Of Achievement
Welcome to the opening chapter of
Quality Counts 2020, Education Week's
annual, comparative examination of the
nation's public education system based
on a wealth of academic, financial, and
socioeconomic factors analyzed by the
EdWeek Research Center.
This January installment-Chance
for Success-is the first of three Quality
Counts reports this year, and the one with
perhaps the most personal connection to
policymakers, educators, and parents. It
focuses on the underlying conditions in
states, schools, and households that affect
whether children get what they need to
become successful adults as they move
through the educational pipeline into the
post-school phase of their lives.
It's much more than a simplistic, bestplaces-to-bring-up-a-family checklist.
Collectively, the Chance-for-Success
Index's 13 indicators-all drawn from
the most-recent federal and other data
sources-offer a kind of body scan of states'
strengths and challenges in their quest to
ensure what the EdWeek Research Center
calls positive outcomes from cradle to
career. The index also makes up one-third
of the overall Quality Counts rankings that
will be published in September.

Multiple Indicators
Some of the Chance for Success
indicators, such as pre-K and kindergarten
enrollment, academic performance, and
high school graduation, are within the
purview of state and local education officials
with control over policy and purse strings.
Others may involve sectors beyond pre-K-12
policy, such as parental education, income,
and English-language fluency in the home.
Taken together, the Chance-for-Success
Index offers policymakers in each state data
they need to make decisions about how
to build on what they're doing right, offer
support in strategic areas, and troubleshoot
where needed.
Complementing that data is a package
of articles with takeaways from this year's
index. They offer lessons from the top- and
bottom-performing states; what's behind
the District of Columbia's steady pattern
of improvement in this area over more
than a decade's time; and a close-up look at
"linguistic integration," or parental fluency
in English, and its significance in the overall
array of indicators.
The Chance-for-Success Index will be
followed in June by top-to-bottom rankings
and analysis of school finance, and in
September by the K-12 Achievement Index
and the annual summative ranking of the
states and the nation, pulling together
all the threads of Quality Counts for a
definitive report card.
-THE EDITORS

10 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 22, 2020 | www.edweek.org

U.S.
Average

C+

B D.C.

AB+

U.S.
Average

79.2

B
BC+

CHANCE FOR SUCCESS
Massachusetts leads the the nation on the Chance-for-Success Index,
with a grade of A-minus. New Mexico gets the nation's lowest mark, a
D-plus. In all, 25 states receive grades between C-minus and C-plus.

C
CD+

SOURCE: EdWeek Research Center, 2020

Scant Progress, Persistent Challenges
In Assuring Bright Prospects for All
States range widely
on opportunity front
By Sterling C. Lloyd
& Alex Harwin
The nation faces persistent challenges
amid marginal progress when it comes to
assuring that school systems and socioeconomic factors provide all children with
bright prospects over the course of a lifetime, the latest analysis of federal data by
the EdWeek Research Center shows.
Based on 13 cradle-to-career indicators
that make up Education Week's annual
Chance-for-Success Index, the nation receives a grade of C-plus on this year's tally,
with a score of 79.2 out of 100 possible
points, up 0.2 points over last year's result.
It's the 13th straight year of C-level grades
when all indicators are factored together.
Massachusetts (91.3) leads the nation,
with the only A-minus. It's followed by five

states at B-plus: New Jersey (89.1), Connecticut (88.0), Vermont (87.7), Minnesota
(87.5), and New Hampshire (87.1). New
Mexico (67.2) is at the bottom of the rankings, with a D-plus.
And consistency is the exception, not
the rule: Most states earn higher scores on
some measures and lower ratings on others.
Roughly half the states finish with grades
between C-minus and C-plus.

Unpacking the Box
The 13 indicators that make up the index
capture opportunities for children to get
off to a good start early in their lives, move
smoothly through pre-K to postsecondary
education, and ultimately achieve positive educational and workforce outcomes
as adults. Results can be broken down to
show education-related opportunities in
three categories: early foundations, the
school years, and adult outcomes.
The early-foundations category includes
family income, parental education levels,

and other factors that influence whether
children start school ready to learn. In the
school years category, the index measures
school participation and performance,
incorporating indicators from preschool
to the postsecondary level. Educational
attainment, steady employment, and income make up the key benchmarks of
adult success.
Scores on the index reflect the research
center's analysis of the most recent available federal data. These include 2018 data
from the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2019 results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the 2016-17 adjusted
cohort graduation rates published by the
U.S. Department of Education.
The index uses a best-in-class scoring system in which states are measured against
the top state on each metric. The nation's
leader on an indicator earns 100 points
with all other states receiving points based
on their distance from the top-scoring state.
Each state's point totals across all the indicators are averaged and converted into A-F

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Education Week - January 22, 2020

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