“What do you mean, ‘proficient’?” The saga of NAEP achievement levels
As I write this, representative samples of fourth and eighth graders are taking National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in math and English.
As I write this, representative samples of fourth and eighth graders are taking National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in math and English.
The proposed California Mathematics Framework generated a storm of controversy when the first draft was released in early 2021. Critics objected to the document’s condemnation of tracking and negative portrayal of acceleration for high-achieving students.
NAEP is by far the country’s most important source of information on student achievement, achievement gaps and so much more, even though it’s invisible to most Americans. Yet NAEP is far from perfect—and could do so much more than it does. It’s time to wrestle with its challenges, shortcomings, and possible future scenarios.
One common refrain in debates around education is that standardized exams negatively impact applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Ashley Jochim, a principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins Mike
How do we see whether achievement gaps between groups of students are widening or narrowing? How can we tell whether eighth graders in Missouri do better or worse in math than their peers in Michigan and Maine? We wouldn’t know these things or much else about K–12 achievement in America without a little-known but vital test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a. “NAEP” or the “Nation’s Report Card.” Assessing the Nation’s Report Card: Challenges and Choices for NAEP, authored by veteran education participant/analyst Chester E. Finn, Jr., examines the history of NAEP, the issues and challenges that it faces today, and ways to strengthen and modernize it for the future.
The money is pouring in, but so are the education challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically affected student achievement, particularly for poorer students and students of color.
The nationwide surge in violent crime, which preceded the pandemic but accelerated in 2020, has prompted a range of policy responses, from expanding
How do we know whether kids in Pennsylvania are better or worse readers at the end of middle school than their peers in Colorado? We wouldn’t know that or much else without a test that may have escaped your notice altogether, unless you’re some sort of education-obsessed policy maker or policy wonk like me. I’m talking about the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is pleased to announce the launch of the National Working Group on Advanced Education. The Working Group’s mission is to promote research, policies, and practices that will develop the full capacities of students with high academic potential, especially Black and Hispanic students and those coming from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Jing Liu, Assistant Professor in Education Policy at the University of Maryla
For many parents and teachers, the Covid experience has confirmed at least two pieces of common sense: It’s hard for kids to learn if they’re not in school, and those who are in school tend to learn more.
The need to understand how schools can improve student attendance has never been greater. This study breaks new ground by examining high schools’ contributions to attendance—that is, their “attendance value-added.”
Last week, Chester Finn used a recent vote of Denver’s anti-reform school board to make three points: first, that the “portfolio” reform there—based on school autonomy, family choice, and chartering out schools where kids aren’t learning—is finished; second, that Denver’s reversal predicts doom elsewhere for complex reform initiatives meant to transform the ways whole public systems operate; an
After living through the transformation of K–12 education in Alberta, Canada, we moved from Calgary to Colorado in 2010. Since then, we have watched the Denver Public Schools story unfold from next door in Jefferson County.
Those who pay attention to the “Nation’s Report Card” tend to take it for granted. In truth, most people heed it not at all.
Inflation is up, and no, I’m not talking about gas prices. I’m talking about some troubling trends observed among the 2019 graduating class of high school students in the recently released 2019 NAEP High School Transcript Study.
Joint Statement from Peggy G. Carr, Ph.D., Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics and Lesley Muldoon, Executive Director of the National Assessment Governing Board
Editor's note: This post was originally published on tomloveless.com.
School choice is on the rise. In the last few decades, families have benefited from an explosion of educational options.
In many ways, the educational failures of the past several years—including those caused by the pandemic—were far worse than they needed to be because of long-standing characteristics of American public education. Namely, the tendency to place employees’ interests first, the disempowering of parents, and the failure to innovate.
On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast (listen on
Confessions of a School Reformer, a new book by emeritus Stanford education professor Larry Cuban, still going strong at eighty-eight, combines personal memoir with a history and analysis of U.S.
Way back in the late 1960s, when federal officials and eminent psychologists were first designing the National Assessment of Educational Progress, they probably never contemplated testing students younger than nine. After all, the technology for mass testing at the time—bubble sheets and No.
A decade ago, most charter school authorizers agreed it was not their job to help struggling charter schools. But times have changed, and best practices in charter school authorizing are evolving.
The proof of a powerful idea is how well it sticks. Once you hear about it “you start to see it everywhere,” as Bari Weiss puts it. She was describing “luxury beliefs,” a phrase coined by Rob Henderson, an Air Force veteran and Ph.D.
The conventional wisdom is that American students from poor families are mostly stuck in sorely underfunded public schools while more affluent families have access to well-resourced ones. For decades, this was largely true.
When the University of California began phasing-out college admissions test scores as part of a recent legal settlement, the rationale was “equity.” Lawyers for the students who brought the lawsuit said that “SAT and ACT scores are largely a proxy for a student’s socioeconomic background and race,” rather than measures of ac