What Does the Slippage in NAEP Reading Scores Mean about our Schools? our Children? our Society?
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is considered the most reliable indicator of trends in American public education. The test is administered to samples of students and is used to track long-range trends. Nobody reports on the NAEP scores of specific students. Nobody judges schools by comparative scores on NAEP. Nobody evaluates teachers based on their students’ NAEP scores. NAEP has never been part of the accountability scheme imposed by No Child Left Behind.
Diane Ravitch explains what the NAEP is: “We have only one authoritative measure of academic performance over time, and that is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP (pronounced ‘nape’). NAEP is part of the U.S. Department of Education. It has an independent governing board, called the National Assessment Governing Board. By statute, the governing board is bipartisan and consists of teachers, administrators, state legislators, governors, business people, and members of the general public.” (Reign of Error, p. 44)
Daniel Koretz, the Harvard expert on the construction and use of standardized tests and the way testing is distorted when the scores are used for high stakes school accountability (to compare and judge schools and teachers), explains why the NAEP scores are respected as an accurate measure of the overall trends in U.S. public schools: “NAEP… is considered a very high-quality test. NAEP scores are not susceptible to inflation because teachers aren’t held accountable for scores and therefore have no incentive to engage in NAEP-focused test prep. And NAEP scores are there for the taking. In math and reading, NAEP is administered every two years, and the scores are available to anyone on the web.” (The Testing Charade, p. 57)
The most recent NAEP scores were released in late October, for the first time since 2017. For the NY Times, Erica Green and Dana Goldstein describe the results: “America’s fourth and eighth graders are losing ground in their ability to read literature and academic texts…. The average eighth-grade reading score declined in more than half of the states compared with CONTINUE READING: What Does the Slippage in NAEP Reading Scores Mean about our Schools? our Children? our Society? | janresseger
