Did the Common Core assessments cause the decline in NAEP scores?
When the NAEP scores were released last week, math achievement had fallen by 1.3 points in fourth grade and 2.4 points in eighth grade. It was the first time that math achievement had fallen in either fourth grade or eighth grade scores since 1990. Given the controversy surrounding the Common Core State Standards, and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) exams aligned to them, many commentators have been asking two questions:
- Did the states taking the PARCC or SBAC assessments underperform other states with similar prior achievement?
- Could PARCC/SBAC participation explain the decline?
The answer to the first question, regarding whether the PARCC/SBAC participants had a larger decline than expected, is a tentative “yes.” The states which administered the PARCC or SBAC tests scored lower in 2015 relative to states with similar 2013 scores. However, the difference was small, less than one scale score point. As a result, the answer to the second question is “no." Even taking the estimated underperformance as a causal effect, the difference between PARCC/SBAC participants and other states accounted for less than one-third of the absolute decline in math achievement between 2013 and 2015. Many states—not just the PARCC and SBAC participants-- saw a decline in math achievement between 2013 and 2015.
Trends
Figure 1 reports trends in fourth and eighth grade math and reading scores, relative to 1990 and 1992 respectively on the main NAEP assessment. Although the cumulative magnitude is not widely appreciated, math scores on the main NAEP assessment have risen steadily since 1990, rising by roughly .9 student-level standard deviations in fourth grade and .6 standard deviations in eighth grade over the past two and a half decades. However, math scores in both grades dipped in 2015.
The scores also dipped in eighth grade reading. However, that dip was much less anomalous, since the cumulative increases in reading scores have been smaller and the biennial changes less consistent over time.
Figures 2 and 3 report the trend in subscale scores in fourth and eighth grade math respectively. In fourth grade, the decline in 2015 was statistically significant for three subscales, with scores on numbers/operations and measurement remaining largely Did the Common Core assessments cause the decline in NAEP scores? | Brookings Institution:
