“Leaders and Laggards,” the new publication of the Center for American Progress, is an astonishing document to be published by a Center that calls itself “progressive” and that claims to be supportive of the historic values of the Democratic Party.

Its methodology is both lacking in honesty and deeply tilted toward right-wing, Republican sources. Here’s a quick review of the report’s grading methodology.

#1—Academic Achievement

The report ranks the 50 states and the District of Columbia in arbitrary quintile groupings: 10 get A, 10 get B, 11 get C, and so on. This means that 31 states get the poor grades of C, D. or F. But the use of quintile grouping tells us absolutely nothing about the NAEP scores. Were they good? Bad? How good or bad? There’s absolutely no way to know from this document.

Thus, the only conclusion from this report is that 31 states have bad grades.

#2—Academic Achievement of Low-Income and Minority Students

This section uses the same kind of quintile curve as the first section.

#3—Return on Investment

This section uses the same kind of quintile curve as the first section.

#4—Truth in Advertising about Student Proficiency

This section relies entirely on a publication by Paul Peterson and Frederick Hess. Peterson is a school voucher advocate who has published numerous studies claiming the effectiveness of school vouchers, most of which have been debunked by other researchers. Hess is the education policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of the leading right-wing, Republican think tanks in Washington.

#5—Rigor of Standards

The first source listed is a publication from Chester Finn and Michael Petrilli. Finn served as assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration and since then has arguably been the most powerful right-wing, Republican policy leader on education issues. Petrilli worked for Rod Paige in the Bush administration, and now he works for Finn.

#8—Flexibility in Management and Policy

This section draws on a ranking of charter school laws from the Center for Education Reform, Jeanne Allen’s organization. Allen is another right-wing, Republican veteran.

“Laggards and Leaders” employs a good deal of deceptive packaging of its data, which can only be intended to make 60% of the states look bad. Indeed Rick Hess, a co-author of the entire report, admitted as much to me in an email: “The focus was on encouraging states to compare themselves one to another, creating competitive pressure and encouraging lower-scoring states to check out there peers.”

Exactly. He’s an honest man. The intent of the quintile ranking was to use whatever data were available to portray 60% of the states as earning grades of C, D, or F—no matter what the data actually meant when examined in their appropriate context.

In addition, “Laggards and Leaders” is a report that one would expect from the Fordham Foundation or from AEI.

• It draws primarily on right-wing, Republican sources.
  
  
• It supports the right-wing, Republican position of relentless hostility to public schools and an inability to discriminate between the real failures and limitations of our schools and the hysterical condemnation of public schooling that we’ve seen since A Nation at Risk, designed largely to privatize public schooling.
  
  
• That “Laggards and Leaders” was co-published by the Center for American Progress, which claims a progressive and Democratic identity, is beyond bizarre. It’s a betrayal of the historic values and mission of the Democratic Party.
  
  
• And it’s about as progressive as Margaret Spellings, whom I expect the Center for American Progress will be lionizing soon.

David Marshak is an emeritus professor in the College of Education at Seattle University.