As students and educators head back for another pandemic-disrupted school year, the third and final edition of Quality Counts 2021 provides a broad perspective on the nation's K-12 system, with summative grades and scores for the U.S. and each state on a range of academic, financial, and socioeconomic indicators that underlie student achievement…

As the 2020-21 school year opens amid the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption, this third and final installment of Quality Counts 2020 delivers a data-driven portrait of the nation's school system along with A-F grades and rankings for each state on a wide range of academic, school finance, and socioeconomic indicators. This report also includes an…

America's high school graduation rate has notably improved, according to figures released last week by the National Center for Education Statistics. The "averaged freshman graduation rate" rose to 78.2 percent of public school students receiving a diploma in 2010, up from 75.5 percent the year before. In 2006, the rate was 73.4 percent, and in…

When it comes to educational challenges, the nation's 12.1 million Hispanic schoolchildren face plenty: language, poverty, lower-than-average graduation rates for high school and college, and, more recently, a wave of laws targeting illegal immigrants that has made school seem like less of a safe haven for Hispanic students in some states. Yet, as…