This Thursday, Ed Week will release its annual report card for states, Quality Counts 2010.  An article posted on the Ed Next website today scrutinizes one element of that report card, the “Chance-for-Success” index.

In “Quality Counts and the Chance-for-Success Index,”education researcher Margaret Raymond and a team of researchers from CREDO at Stanford University note that, while grades on the Chance-for-Success Index are sometimes interpreted as measures of school quality, the grades are closely related to measures of family background, and do not represent the contribution of a state’s schools to the success of its youngsters.

A press release summarizing the findings is available here: Quality Counts Grades Unfair to Poor States, Researchers Argue