U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for a Competitive Workforce
March 2007
This report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (compiled with the help of the Center for American Progress and the American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess) measures the educational effectiveness of states (and relies on Fordham's grading of state standards). The report doesn't assign an overall grade to each state, so one can't say which is at the top of the class. But the group's website provides a useful and well-designed tool that permits the curious to sift through the grades and rankings either by state or by indicator. The report's general conclusions are accurate if not novel: "The state of education data remains abysmal. No business could be run with such inadequate information." Moreover, the Chamber argues that schools must address a "lack of management savvy, information, and organizational discipline." All in all, this is a valuable companion to other state-by-state report cards. See the interactive map or download a PDF version of the report here.
