States are required by law to measure the academic progress of their students, but they use very different measurements and have an incentive to make their schools look good, so we can’t quite trust the results. For decades now, we’ve had national and state educational report cards that take a representative sample that allows us [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'NAEP'
USA vs. The World
United States schoolchildren are not the highest performing in the world, on average. This is well known and constantly cited in various calls-to-arms, from the memorable “hostile foreign power” rhetoric of A Nation at Risk to garden-variety speeches warning of economic threats from brainy children in Beijing and Bangalore. The track record is spotty, to [...]
Iowa’s Charter Schools
I’m proud to say I attended Iowa public schools from kindergarten through college, and it so happens that my education almost perfectly corresponds to the heyday of Iowa’s education system.
In 1992, when I was 8, Iowa’s fourth-graders scored higher than all but one state in math and all but four states in reading on the [...]
Arts, Continued
Per Chad below, new results from the NAEP 8th grade Arts & Music test show very little change over time. So little change that’s it’s really kind of fascinating. In 1997, respondents got 42 percent of the art questions right. In 2008, they also got 42 percent of the questions right. Of the 12 listed [...]
New Report: NCLB Did Not Narrow Arts Curriculum
Under the headline, “Frequency of arts instruction remains steady, ” a new report from the National Assessment of Education Progress concluded:
In 2008, fifty-seven percent of eighth-graders attended schools where music instruction was offered at least three or four times a week, and 47 percent attended schools where visual arts instruction was offered at least as [...]
The Myth of Too Many Great Students
In the course of a witty and poignant reflection on his daughter’s college search, Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post writes:
The dirty secret of the American educational system is that there’s a glut of good kids — excellent grades, first-rate test scores, a blizzard of extracurriculars. We’ve all read the stories of the despairing admissions [...]
The Starbucks / GOOD Magazine Conspiracy of Lies
Last month I noted that GOOD magazine had published an anti-NCLB article so egregious in its lies and incoherence that it stood out in an already-crowded field. This was more annoying than alarming, since I doubt many people take their policy cues from GOOD Magazine.
Unfortunately, as I was paying for my latte in the Capitol [...]
Worth Repeating
Matt Yglesias makes a point that can’t be made often enough (we make it here at least once a year): when you compare urban school districts on a common measure (the NAEP) and break the numbers out by socioeconomic status, some are much better than others. Which, to my mind, suggests that it’s reasonable to [...]
Those tricky charts
The Fordham Foundation’s report comparing high and low achievers under No Child Left Behind had me initially convinced. I wrote an entire blog post claiming that it showed the merits of NCLB, that the law could be credited for closing the achievement gap, and pushing for a future system of accountability that held schools responsible [...]
Free Advice
Eduwonkette writes:
In this month’s issue of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a new study by UT-Austin professor Julian Vasquez-Heilig and Linda Darling-Hammond, “Accountability Texas-Style: The Progress and Learning of Urban Minority Students in a High-Stakes Testing Context,” revisits the Houston miracle by analyzing years of student-level test score and graduation data (1995-2002). There’s no version [...]
The Same Same-Sex Story
Peter Meyer, writing in the newest Education Next, tells us a familiar story of same-sex schools. He cites NAEP statistics that show boys aren’t doing as well as girls, spotlights a handful of successful single-gender schools and quotes people who reference but do not cite “study after study” that demonstrates that both boys and girls [...]
Poverty, Schooling, and the Urban NAEP
One of the foundational arguments in education centers on poverty and schooling. All reasonable people agree that poverty has a negative influence on education, just as all reasonable people agree that quality schooling has a positive influence. The point of argument is how much these things matter, relative to one another. Some people think the [...]
The Spellings Commission, One Year Later
I went to the signing ceremony for the “College Cost Reduction and Access Act” this morning, at the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House. Flanked by Pell grant recipients, Secretary Spellings, and members of Congress including Rep. George Miller, President Bush offered some fairly pro forma remarks in favor of Pell grants [...]
Another Take on NAEP
As Kevin notes, the spin around the new NAEP results is really quite something. The statements about the scores (which show moderate, but not earth-shattering improvements) range from mildly over/under enthusiastic to wildly celebratory or wholly dismissive.
Senator Kennedy managed to use the occasion to condemn spending on the Iraq war, while President Bush went [...]
Nothing to See Here
Bill Richardson has a remarkably useless op-ed in USA Today today, calling for the abolishment of No Child Left Behind. Why does he want to “scrap it”? I have no idea. The piece is just a series of unsupported cliches and selective statistics that could be rearranged in random order to no discernible effect. If [...]
Sample problems
Gannett has an in-depth piece today comparing each state’s scores on NAEP versus their own tests. They also let you try to solve some sample NAEP fourth and eighth grade math problems, separated by level. Problem is, they got one wrong. Go to the “proficient” question on 8th grade math. Gannett says the correct answer [...]
Dispelling the Myth
Most of the conversation about findings from the new report from the Center on Education Policy–state test scores are up–will focus on the implications for No Child Left Behind. But the best way to interpret the findings, particularly as they relate to elementary math scores, is to see them as adding to the growing body [...]
Statistics with Meaning
NCES released their annual report this morning on the condition of education in the U.S. They took the opportunity to highlight high school coursetaking trends. More states are requiring more coursework for graduation, and overall, the average number of course credits completed by graduates increased from 21.7 in 1982 to 25.8 in 2004. More students [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.