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National Education Reports

Each year, national organizations of one kind or another author reports on how well the nation's schools are doing. Organizations sometimes create huge spreadsheets of data on the various states and then craft "report cards" describing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the education systems in each state. Some entities and organizations, such as the U.S. Census Bureau, simply report their data.

We use data and reports from all over the country in our research, and encourage Maine residents interested in learning more about how Maine's schools compare to those in other states to check out the reports below.

 

Quality Counts

Education Week, the nation's “paper of record" on education issues, publishes a series of reports each year, the most notable being Quality Counts, which reports on a whole host of indicators of school quality.

The 2010 Quality Counts report was just released, with Maine generally falling somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of the quality of its schools. The website features an interactive map to allow for easy comparison between states.

The 2009 edition of Quality Counts is available online as well, as are all past editions, which are easy to find using search engines.

 

Diplomas Count

Each year around graduation time, Education Week releases its annual Diplomas Count report, which focuses exclusively on graduation rates. The first Diplomas Count report, released in 2006, revealed that many states were inflating their graduation rates. Maine, which had been touting graduation rates in the high eighties, was found by Education Week to have a graduation rate of 74 percent.

According to the 2009 report, which is the most recent, Maine has made mediocre progress improving graduation rates, ranking 30^th in the nation in the growth of graduation rates over the past ten years.

 

The Education Trust

Another good source of data on Maine’s schools is The Education Trust, which publishes annual Education Watch reports for each state. Their 2009 report for Maine can be found here, with the biggest takeaway being that Maine has seen very little improvement over the past few years in either 4^th grade math or 8^th grade reading, at least according to results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Education. (See below.)

 

Leaders and Laggards

This past year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in cooperation with the left-leaning Center for American Progress, authored a report card-type report titled Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Innovation. The report measures the extent to which states have adopted promising education reform approaches. As reported on the MHPC blog when the report was released in November, 2009, Maine does not rate very highly as an education innovator.

• Maine gets a D (45^th in the nation) for School Management. The report claims that “Maine does a poor job managing its schools in a way that encourages thoughtful innovation.”
• Maine gets a C (42^nd in the nation) in School Finance, with the report claiming that Maine "receives a below-average score for the online accessibility of its financial data."
• Maine gets a B/C for School Staffing, but an F for the strength of its teacher evaluation systems.
• Maine gets a D for Educational Data, which is found to be “below average.”
• Maine gets a D (38^th in the nation) for Educational Technology despite the much-touted laptop program.

 

The New Teacher Project

The New Teacher Project agrees with the U.S. Chamber that Maine trails as an education innovator. Its 2009 report, Interpreting "Race to the Top": Summary & Analysis of USDE Draft Guidelines, found Maine to be one of 14 states that "does not meet federal requirements" for Race to the Top funding. Race to the Top is a federal education grant program which requires states to adopt significant education reforms. Maine was thought to be ineligible for the grant by virtue of the fact that it had no public charter schools, though revisions to the grant softened that language.

 

The U.S. Department of Education

The U.S. Department of Education needs to justify its existence and so issues reports of one kind or another periodically, most of which are hardly worth reading. A report released last year, though, should have raised some eyebrows in Maine, as it appeared to suggest that Maine was weakening it academic standards. In short, Maine was listed as one of the states in which students so much better on state achievement tests than they do on national tests, which suggests that the state’s own tests have been made easier. The report, titled Mapping State Proficiency Standards onto NAEP Scales: 2005-2007, can be found on the Department of Education’s website.

 

The NAEP Test

The NAEP test referred to above is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is a nationwide student achievement test conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S. Department of Education. It is known as the "Nation’s Report Card” and is generally considered to be a fair and accurate measure of student achievement, one that allows for state-to-state comparisons. The Center’s website helpfully organizes current and historic NAEP test score data by state, allowing site visitors to easily see how well Maine has done relative to other states and the national average.

 

The Census Bureau

How much is Maine really spending on its schools? There is no way to tell from data on the Maine Department of Education’s website, as no two numbers found there agree with each other. A better source is the U.S. Census, which published a new report last year calculating total and per-pupil spending by all states. According to them, Maine spent $11, 387 per pupil in FY 2007, the most recent data reported by the Census. That was good enough for 12^th highest in the nation, and that was three school years ago. Maine’s per-pupil spending is likely well over $12,000 per-pupil by now.

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