Giving Compass' Take:

• New York city schools' scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress remained stagnant from 2015-2017, showing no growth on the exams in two years.

• Will the addition of more innovative schools that encourage individualized learning help students achieve better scores on assessments like these? What will need to happen for students to get out of the 'stagnant' stage?

• The 74 outlines how the NAEP is helpful in finding achievement gaps and patterns in education.

The de Blasio administration can cite a rising graduation rate and faster-than-average state test score gains as evidence that its education efforts are paying off — but not scores from a national exam considered the most reliable yardstick for student achievement.

New York City’s scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress, known as NAEP, were flat from 2015 to 2017, according to new data released earlier this month.

New York City is hardly alone in posting stagnant scores. The vast majority of states and districts — including New York state — also saw similar proportions of fourth- and eighth-graders meet the proficiency bar in reading and math in 2017 and 2015.

Students in New York state performed slightly worse than the national average last year. And students in New York City also posted lower-than-average scores than students in the 26 other districts that participate in a city-level comparison.

“You should never think of NAEP, or even the state assessments, as a referendum on a particular package of policies or reforms,” Aaron Pallas, a researcher at Columbia University’s Teachers College, told Chalkbeat in 2015, the last time NAEP reading and math results were released for the city and state. (They were flat then, too.)This year’s scores come amid a broad shift to computer-based testing that some education officials have cautioned would tamp down scores, particularly for groups of students with little online testing experience and in states that have not made the switch for their own exams.

NCES downplayed the concerns, saying that it had taken extensive steps to account for the dynamic when analyzing scores.

Read the full article about New York City Schools NAEP by Philissa Cramer at Chalkbeat.