Harsh News About State Progress

Just in time for the midterm elections, the Fordham Foundation comes out with a 50-state report (How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children).

As you can see, the grades given that are much harsher than Ed Week or many others. "Just eight states can claim even moderate success over the past 15 years at boosting the percentage of their poor or minority students who are at or above proficient in reading, math or science," according to the report release.

Ever the purists, Fordham focuses on NAEP scores, which all too often aren't what states like to highlight. For what it's worth, I helped write a handful of the state profiles before they went through the Fordham wringer.

UPDATE: The Chicago Sun-Times takes credit for having caught a mistake in the original version of the Fordham report: leaving out kids who scored "advanced" on NAEP.