Business, Government Legal News from throughout WVGroup ranks WV K-12 education system dead last among 50 states

Two recently issued education rankings gave very different grades to West Virginia. 

West Virginia's K-12 education system came in dead last on the American Legislative Exchange Council's annual report card, released Jan. 24. However the Quality Counts report released in early January gave the Mountain State a B- and ranked it ninth in the country.

The two reports looked at different aspects of the state's education system and used completely different matrixes to rank states, however they point to different approaches some groups take to evaluate education on a national basis.  

The ALEC report card measures state school success in six categories: State academic standards, charter schools, home school regulation burden, private school choice programs, teacher quality and policies and online learning. The report card also looks at spending levels and achievement related to fourth and eighth grade reading exam scores.

West Virginia received an overall grade of D+.

"Everyone interested in improving K-12 education in America should study this resource carefully," said ALEC National Chairman and Rep. Dave Firzzell, R-Ind.

Massachusetts ranked No. 1 with a grade of B-. It had the highest percentage of fourth- and eighth-graders scoring proficient or higher on National Assessment of Educational Progress reading exams. West Virginia's rankings in those categories was 26 percent and 22 percent, respectively.

ALEC's website says the organization was founded about 30 years ago as "a nonpartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty. Their vision and initiative resulted in the creation of a voluntary membership association for people who believed that government closest to the people was fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C."

The Quality Counts study was published in Education Week and looked 100 different indicators that fell under six categories — the Chance for Success index, K-12 achievement, school funding, teacher assessment and training and standards, assessments and accountability.