U.S. Schools Get Low Marks from Chamber of Commerce

WSJ: Amid a growing recognition of the gap between available jobs and trained workers, a major U.S. business federation is placing pressure on state-level educators and policy makers to improve their return on investment, international competitiveness and overall academic achievement. In its release on Thursday, the 2014 "Leaders & Laggards" report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation shared a bleak picture of the nation's educational performance on business-minded criteria.

"We're making progress but not enough progress...people ought to be outraged," said Cheryl Oldham, vice president of the Center for Education and Workforce of the foundation, which is an arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Hopefully this is a wake-up call."

With the help of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, the chamber assigned grades to each state in 11 separate measures, ranging from the state's marketplace for varying school options, such as charters, to the state's pension-funding situation. In the report's comparison of national test scores, all states improved on their academic performance since 2007, but the range of improvement was mixed. South Carolina, Michigan and South Dakota experienced a bump of less that 2 percentage points, while Hawaii, Maryland and the District of Columbia scored at least 10 percentage-point gains....

read ... The Wall Street Journal

CoC: 2014 K-12 Leaders & Laggards