Comment 19 by Kurt75 : - How can you say standards are ‘Mediocre to Awful’ and then give grades from A to F?

Do the "grades" on standards correlate with performance?

So people tasked with writing standards don't know how? This seems like an incredibly easy problem to fix. Just adopt California's standards, or those of any of the A- states.

Ya, I'm not sure I agree with the way the grading is done. For starters, It doesnt seem to take performance into account at all. It seems more a grade on how the various bureaucracies are run than of the actual schools.

For example, how does New Jersey get a D? The report seems to fault them greatly for not having clear specific state standards on certain things. It then examines "classroom examples", but doesnt establish how these classroom examples are used (or if they are universally used) in the actual classroom.

They wind up with straight zeros for physics and chemistry because "New Jersey has no standards for high school physics or chemistry". That seems hardly fair given that New Jersey has a very high percentage of students who complete advanced placement chemistry and physics.

The reason I bring this up is because I went to High School in New Jersey, and still live there because the schools are great. My science teacher freshman year was someone who retired from Bell Labs and for sophomore year my high school offered introductory classes in mechanical and electrical engineering. Furthermore, in proficiency testing New Jersey students rank in top percentages internationally for mathematics and science.

That New Jersey public schools get a D, while California (a state with far lower performance) or Louisiana are given As and Bs, leaves me with some questions about how accurately this report card evaluates each states school system.