Does anyone out there believe that the dramatic test-score increases coming out of the Empire State are legitimate? Sol Stern, for one, highly-knowledgeable on all educational goings on in New York, is with the naysayers. He points out in a piece on the City Journal website that
almost none of the dramatic improvements in the state tests show up in the most recent tests administered by the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), otherwise known as the "nation's report card." NAEP scores in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and eighth-grade math in New York State remained flat from 2005 to 2007.
Many critics have jumped on this embarassing comparison already. But Stern also illuminates this dubious idea of "rigorous peer review," which state schools chief Richard Mills has used to try to deflect the inevitable charges of test-rigging:
One of the slides in his PowerPoint presentation was titled ENSURING THESE RESULTS ARE ACCURATE and claimed that "New York's testing system passed rigorous peer review by [the] U.S. Dep't of Education." But this "rigorous peer review," which all 50 states now undergo under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), is less impressive than it sounds. I was told by a federal education department official that the review covers only the general process used by the states in establishing a reliable system of standards and assessment. It does not constitute a federal seal of approval for the accuracy of any state's particular tests.
That's not really a surprise, considering how forgiving the feds have been on pretty much all of NCLB's most important requirements. What is suprising is that most everyone still believes this unwieldy law can be dramatically improved during the next go-round and that, somehow, politicians at all levels will lose the motivation to game high-stakes tests.
