Friday, January 11, 2013

Rhee vs. QC: How StudentsFirst's Report Card and Quality Counts Differ - State EdWatch - Education Week

Rhee vs. QC: How StudentsFirst's Report Card and Quality Counts Differ - State EdWatch - Education Week:


Rhee vs. QC: How StudentsFirst's Report Card and Quality Counts Differ

With the release this week of two different K-12 state rankings, one from Education Week and one fromStudentsFirst, it's been a bonanza for people who like (or at least are compelled to write about) "report cards" on education. Naturally enough, there have been some comparisons between the two. For example, Motoko Rich, an education reporter at The New York Times, noted that both Education Week's Quality Counts and StudentsFirst gave Florida a B- grade. The obvious statistical difference there is that StudentsFirst's B- was the highest grade given out to any state, while Quality Counts gave better grades to five other states.
But more broadly, what are the similarities and differences between the two reports?
First, since several people have made an issue of this, it's important to note that Quality Counts includes actual student achievement data. For example, the share of a state's students scoring proficient in reading would get a corresponding number of points on a zero-to-100 basis on one indicator used in the methodology for Quality