D.C.’s Controversial Former Chancellor Releases New Ed. Policy Report Card

The “State of Education” report has met with mixed reviews.
Washington — A new report card released Wednesday gives mostly mediocre and poor grades to states on whether their education policies are conducive to raising student achievement. But it was the report card itself that earned some unfavorable marks during its national debut.

The new annual report card — titled “State of Education: State Policy Report Card” — was released by StudentsFirst, a Sacramento-based organization founded and led by controversial former Washington, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Its relative value became a matter of debate Wednesday during a forum about the report held at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute here in the nation’s capital.

The report was billed by StudentsFirst as “the most comprehensive state-by-state assessment” of policy in the areas of elevating and improving the teacher profession, giving parents more information and choice and making sure public dollars are spent wisely in ways that help students learn.

Critics remained unconvinced.

“For advocates who support StudentsFirst, this [report card] is a good thing,” said Ulrich Boser, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “But for skeptics, for people who are not supporting of the StudentsFirst agenda, this does very little to convince them that this is the right set of policies.”

Boser directed his remarks at the various education policies that the report casts as being favorable to school reform. Those policies include equitable funding for charter schools and adopting “parent trigger” policies that give more information and power to parents to demand school turnarounds at low-performing schools.