Andy wonders if he's being naive again to think that a rise in test scores is a bad thing. At issue is the new Center on Education Policy report which shows that, in most states, scores are up at all three of NCLB's "performance levels": basic, proficient, and advanced.
Now, before I answer Andy's question (in the affirmative of course!), let me state that the??inquiry CEP pursued is a worthwhile one, and its researchers seem to have approached it responsibly--with some important caveats (see below).
Flypaper readers know that we at Fordham are also interested in knowing whether students at all levels of performance--and particularly at the highest levels--are making gains under NCLB. The fear is that the focus on getting "bubble kids" over the "proficient" bar might lead schools to ignore kids who are well below or above it. (The sociologist formerly known as Eduwonkette thinks this sort of triage is happening in DC.)
We addressed this question a year ago in our major report, High Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind. In it, Tom Loveless examined NAEP results at the 10th and 90th percentiles, and found the low-performers making big gains and the high-performers making minimal ones. (His exact phrase for the progress of the high-performers was "languid.") Helpfully, he also provided a literature review of the handful of other studies that have looked at this "triage" question (i.e., is there evidence that schools are focusing on the bubble kids to the detriment of others?). Here's how he summed it up (see pages 14-15):
These three studies yield no clear conclusion as to whether NCLB-style accountability encourages educational triage. In particular, it is unclear how high achievers fare under such systems. They gained (Springer), lost (Reback), and experienced mixed results (Neal and Schanzenbach).
Add Loveless's study, and this new one from CEP, to the mix, and the take-away is the same: no clear conclusion.
So why did Tom find "languid" progress for high-achievers while CEP found "gains in 71% of the trend lines at the advanced level and declines in 23%"? (Keep in mind, though, that the gains were even more pronounced at the proficient level.) Here are a few thoughts--and the caveats to keep in mind.
First, there's plenty of reason to believe that even the "advanced" level set by many states is rather low. Since these tests are designed to get a very accurate read at the "proficient" level--and since that level is set so ridiculously low by most states--it's unlikely that the advanced level is high enough to accurately measure our top students. They simply max out on the tests, getting virtually all of the questions right. So the progress made at the advanced level could be real, but might be an indicator of how above-average students are doing, not our highest-performers. Contrast this to the Loveless study, which used NAEP (whose range goes much higher), and which examined the top ten percent of students.
And second, in the CEP report, a trend line could be positive without students making very strong gains. This would be consistent with Tom's findings, in that high-achievers made gains, but they were "languid."
So here's my bottom line: It's still likely that lots of schools are engaging in triage and focusing on the bubble kids. These kids tend to be low-performers, since the proficiency bar itself is set so low in most states. However, a stronger focus on core reading and math skills probably does "lift all boats." And furthermore, the affluent suburban schools with the bulk of the highest-performing students probably don't engage in as much of this triage, because their students are going to pass the state tests no matter what. Faced with different pressures and incentives, they focus on getting more of their kids to the advanced level. (We see this in the Washington suburbs.)??So if you're affluent and attend a homogenous school in the suburbs, you're probably not subjected to NCLB's downsides. But if you're poor and high achieving, and attend a school with lots of low-performing kids, well, you are flat out of luck.
Andy, still optimistic?
