Missouri Education Watchdog: Tying Socio-Economic Status to Test Scores

Missouri Education Watchdog: Tying Socio-Economic Status to Test Scores:

Tying Socio-Economic Status to Test Scores

by Anngie

In speaking to groups about common core and the data collection that is occurring because of it and simultaneously to it, we often get the question, "What is the government's plan for all that data? What are they going to do with it."

USA Today reported on a a new white paper released, the U.S. Department of Education which may partially answer that question. The paper (Improving the Measurement of Socio-Economic Status  for the NAEP)  "proposes classifying students by more than just their parents’ income or education levels. It explains the federal government should be able to tie test scores to a host of indicators, including: whether parents own or rent their home, how many times a family has moved in the past year and whether anyone in their household gets medical assistance."

And what will they do with the  socio-economic classification? "It would allow us to target resources better," Sean Reardon of the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

The paper calls for better ways of collecting data on students and discusses how the NAEP currently collects this information, through a 13-question survey that eighth-grade students fill out at the end of the test. It asks