MISSOURI AND ILLINOIS NOT MAKING GRADE IN EDUCATION

The grades are in on the state of public education in the United States; Missouri and Illinois had little cause to celebrate.

Quality Counts '98, an annual report issued by Education Week magazine and Pew Charitable Trusts, analyzed data from government and private sources, including policy-makers, business leaders and educators.

That data was then used to rate states in the areas of student achievement, standards and assessments, quality of teaching, school climate and resource equity, adequacy and allocation.

Most states received, for the second year, average grades of C in all areas. The report found all states seemed to be making improvements in the area of standards and assessments. However, it said, students won't show any gains in academic achievement unless the new standards are made challenging and are continually enforced.

"Although the states have expended a lot of time and energy setting standards for what students should know and be able to do, those standards will do little to enhance student achievement unless they are rigorous," the report said.

Overall, there seems to be a state of education crisis in American cities. Achievement is abysmal for urban students, the report said. What's worse, most states face extreme gaps between their expectations for students and the current reality in their urban districts, the report added.

"To be sure, some big-city schools and districts evoke words like heroism, commitment, innovation, and success," the report states. "But these, for the most part, remain the exceptions. Such islands of achievement serve to make even less tolerable to oceans of failure that surround them."

Missouri mustered a B+ in the area of standards and assessments for its best grade, while the state received a failing grade for its resource equity. The report said the state's desegregation efforts in Kansas City and St. Louis were the source of most of its inequity problems, while its attempt to phase in performance-based assessments were behind the highest grade.

Ironically, Illinois' highest and lowest grades all involved funding resources. The state earned a B in resource adequacy for its education funding, but was given Ds in the areas of resource equity and allocation. Although the state has tackled problems in urban schools in East St. Louis and Chicago, children in those cities are still suffering, the report said. Reform changes in the Chicago schools appear to be working, it said, but the state intervention in East St. Louis appears to be causing even more problems for the plagued school district.

Missouri and Illinois were not alone in their funding and achievement problems in urban districts. Nearly every state will have to make critical decisions in order to avoid the collapse of their urban districts, said the report.

"Urban schools are fighting a battle they cannot win without strong support from local, state and federal political leaders, and from voters and taxpayers outside the cities," stated the report. "If the states, in particular, do not accept this challenge, the continuing national movement to improve schools will fail."