#naep

Recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that eighth-grade students in Texas are falling behind in reading and math proficiency when compared to their peers in other states. The results have raised concerns among educators and policymakers in the Lone Star State, who are calling for action to address the issue. According to the NAEP data, Texas eighth-graders…

The shadow cast by NAEP

Following the October 24th release of “The Nation’s Report Card” by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), it’s no surprise that the rhetoric of education reform is once again on the rise. In reality, the tide of assault on public education had only receded a little in the quiet between “Race To The Top” and COVID.  Now, on the heels of the pandemic, if you choose to believe…

Muchos en declive y otros mejor y mejor

POR HERGIT “Coco” LLENAS

Los estudiantes de casi todos los estados mostraron un declive en su rendimiento académico, según The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), conocido más comúnmente como the Nacional Report Card (Boletín nacional de calificaciones).

Al compararse los resultados de 2017 con los de 2019, se encontró que en 31 estados el 70% de los alumnos no está leyendo…

NAEP-A-Thon! The 2019 MA NAEP results are in. The Red Sox might not be in the World Series but our public school students are champs again.

Massachusetts tops the nation in annual NAEP reports.

Getting beyond the headlines, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores or The Nation’s Report Card provides a wealth of data on public, private and charter schools across the country. The website for NAEP results and the Massachusetts results summary has a treasure trove of data, reports and visualizations.

The NAEP…

Anyone who has read all my posts on Washpost opinion gal Jennifer Rubin would probably tell me to shut the fuck up. But this one’s different, because I agree with Jennie yet dispute her tactics.

Jennie’s post of contention, “Graham sums up how stupid the GOP has become”, is an extended poke at South Carolina mushmouth/loudmouth Lindsey Graham, who, Jennie points out, once ridiculed Donald Trump but now seems determined to be recognized as the president’s biggest and bestest bitch. The new Lindsey, Jennie (correctly) says, “perfectly typifies the horrible habits of the Trumpized GOP — playing to low-information voters’ ignorance, ignoring real problems in favor of hyperventilating over phony ones, infatuation with authoritarianism and deep cynicism.”

Okay, that’s 100% true, but a few column inches later, Jennie goes off the rails, pissed, justifiably, that Graham wants the president to take money allocated to be spent on such projects as a middle school (for children of military personnel) in Kentucky for his false border emergency, “explaining” that “I would say it’s better for the middle-school kids in Kentucky to have a secure border.”

“[T]est scores for kids in rural, red states like Kentucky are atrocious,” wails born in Pennsylvania raised in California Jennie, sounding very much like the provincial bi-coaster she is. “Kentucky routinely ranks near the bottom in educational attainment.” Jennie “proves” her first statement by quoting a state testing official moaning over scores on Kentucky’s own state tests, while she buttresses the second to a link that, if you search long enough, ranks states by percentages of residents according to educational attainment.

First of all, if you look at national testing scores, that is to say, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or “NAEP”, on whose behalf I labored for almost 20 years, you’ll find, as of 2017, that in reading and mathematics for grades 4 and 8, Kentucky ranked at the national average for students at or above NAEP's standard for "Proficient"1 in three out of four cases (below average for grade 8 mathematics), while cough, cough California was below the national average in all four instances. In terms of educational attainment, Kentucky has a lower percentage of residents without a high school diploma than California, though, surprise, surprise, also a lower percentage of those with advanced degrees.

When people like Jennie, and their name is legion, bewail the “atrocious” scores of kids today, what they mean is “I never met a fourth-grader as smart as I am,” which is a statement that even I could make. Wailin’ Jennie and her ilk expect everyone to be like them, though, if they bother to remember, back in high school there was no one like them, no one else so compulsively competitive, so pumped over Moby Dick2 or Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem.

Afterwords California’s poor performance is largely a function of its massive Hispanic population. Variations in test scores among states reflect both SES (socio-economic status) and the size of low-scoring racial/ethnic populations, i.e, black and Hispanic. States that are low income, and/or have large black or Hispanic populations will tend to have lower test scores. Kentucky has few blacks or Hispanics, but ranks 46th in income, which suggests that Kentucky’s educational performance could easily be higher than would be expected, considering its demographic makeup, rather than “atrocious”.

NAEP's "Governing Board", which sets NAEP's proficiency standards, says that every student should reach them. In fact, this is setting the bar far too high. The twelfth-grade standards "translate" to "capable of successfully completing a four-year college curriculum without remedial instruction." It is silly to expect half the student population to meet this standard, let alone the entire population. ↩︎