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Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Bill Gates needs to get his facts straight on test scores | Seattle Education

Bill Gates needs to get his facts straight on test scores | Seattle Education:

Bill Gates needs to get his facts straight on test scores


I came across an article that I had saved on the NAEP (pronounced “nape”) test results over the last 12 years and Bill Gates pronouncement that our school system is a failure based on his perception that students have not shown any academic gains over the last 40 years.
Au contraire Mr. Gates, not according to the NAEP test.
Mr. Richard Rothstein with the Economic Policy Institute states in a report last year titled Fact Challenged Policy:
The only longitudinal measure of student achievement that is available to Bill Gates or anyone else is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP provides trends for 4th, 8th, and 12th graders, disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and poverty, since about 1980 in basic skills in math and reading (called the