or the third year, Quality Counts reports on student achievement across the states, and grades the states in four areas that are essential to building a high-quality education system. While some of our indicators have changed, the overall categories remain the same:

Raising student achievement;

Developing standards and related assessments for what students should learn, and holding schools accountable for helping students meet the standards;

Enacting policies so that teachers are prepared to teach to the standards;

Creating schools and classrooms that are conducive to learning; and

Distributing money for schools equitably and adequately and using it wisely.

Once again, states averaged a C. But many are pushing ahead with efforts such as improving teacher quality and devising tests that reflect their academic standards.

Achievement: This year's report has no new state-level results from the nation's testing program, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. The U.S. Department of Education plans to release 4th and 8th grade reading scores and 8th grade writing scores early this year.

Since 1990, six states have shown improvements in both 4th- and 8th-grade mathematics scores on the national assessment.

Because of growing evidence that early-childhood education can have a positive effect on later achievement, we've also added a column on statewide prekindergarten programs to our page of additional achievement indicators.

Standards and Assessments: Forty states now have standards in all four core subjects, up from 38 last year. An additional eight have adopted standards in at least one subject. That leaves only Idaho and Iowa with no official standards in English, math, science, or social studies.

It may be a while, however, before all 50 states have finished work on standards. During the past few years, several states have scrapped their standards and started over, including Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Idaho, which is on its third set of draft standards.

The real movement this year is in assessment. Thirty-four states have tests that include performance tasks for students, which can range from crafting a sentence to completing a scientific experiment and writing up the results. Last year, only 21 states used tests that included performance tasks. We give a higher grade to states that go beyond the use of multiple-choice tests because those states ask students to construct responses rather than just select the right answer.

This year, we also made several changes to our grading system in this category. In Quality Counts '98, we incorporated the Council for Basic Education's grades for the rigor of state English and math standards, as well as an evaluation of the clarity and specificity of state standards by the American Federation of Teachers. Since then, the CBE has decided to discontinue its evaluation of state standards and to focus on providing technical assistance to states. Because of a growing consensus that academic standards should at least be clear and specific, and because the AFT plans to continue its evaluation in the future, we have decided to use the AFT evaluations exclusively in Quality Counts '99. This year, we have included the AFT's ratings in all four core subjects.

We also changed the way we grade states on how they hold schools accountable for results. Last year, we relied on a report by the Education Commission of the States: We listed states that had public accountability reports, rewards for schools or districts, and sanctions for schools or districts. This year, we conducted our own analysis, using stricter definitions and focusing on school-based accountability. We also added two categories that are essential to a complete accountability system: rating school performance and assisting low-performing schools. (Read "Taking Stock" for details on our study of state accountability systems.)

Finally, we refined our indicator on student accountability, giving full credit only to those states that now have high school exit exams pegged to the 10th grade level, and partial credit to states that plan to do so. We also left out states that are planning to require students to pass tests to be promoted to a higher grade. Only six states currently have laws linking student promotion to test scores. Thus, the total number of states with a "yes" in this column drops from 16 to three.

Efforts To Improve Teacher Quality: Last year, we noted that 20 states had adopted standards for what beginning teachers should know and be able to do. This year, we conducted a new survey to take a closer look at how states are setting standards for beginning teachers. And we uncovered a disturbing trend.

Although states are writing standards that describe the competencies for new teachers, only about half are holding teachers--rather than education schools--accountable for meeting the standards. Tough standards for institutions that train teachers are important, but most experts agree--and the public has come to expect--tough standards for beginning teachers.

In this year's report, seven states went from "no" to "yes" in this category. But an additional seven went from "no" to "program," our designation for standards that describe teacher competencies but hold education schools accountable for meeting them. We also downgraded six states from "yes" to "program" because state officials told us they intend to hold institutions rather than teachers themselves responsible for meeting the standards.

The good news is that enough states are now working to set standards for beginning teachers that we were able to remove two interim indicators: whether states were participating in the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, a group working to create rigorous assessments for new teachers, and whether states contributed to INTASC's development of the assessments.

We made additional improvements to this category for Quality Counts '99, including how we grade professional development, testing for new teachers, and student teaching. A methodology section describes the revised grading system in detail.

School Climate: Because the federal government released no new state-by-state data on class size, parent involvement, and student engagement in 1998, most of the information we use to grade states in this category has not been updated.

We were able to update only the information on school autonomy. Four additional states adopted charter school laws last year, bringing the nationwide total to 33.

Resources: We use the same indicators as last year's to measure the adequacy, equity, and allocation of educational funding. We have updated all of the data by one year. Management Analysis and Planning, Inc., or MAP, a Davis, Calif., consulting firm, conducted the state-by-state equity analysis for this year's report.

But the data available to measure equity are not as recent as we would like, mostly because of the time it takes the federal government to collect and audit data from nearly 15,000 separate school districts. Something we said in the inaugural issue of Quality Counts bears repeating: "If the data we depend on to monitor the economy were as incomplete ... and as out of date as the data we depend on to monitor education in the United States, we might as well have the economy of a Third World country."

A Note of Caution: Readers should take care in comparing this year's grades with those in previous editions of Quality Counts because some of the indicators are not comparable. We have sought to improve our indicators to reflect the best thinking about what works in public education.

--Craig D. Jerald, Bridget K. Curran, and Ulrich Boser

(c) 1999 Editorial Projects in Education

Vol. 18, number 17, page 106