Giving Compass' Take:

• Frederick M. Hess suggests several potential reasons for NAEP scores to increase and points out the futility of trying to parse the scores without understanding what they reflect.  

• What data can help to clarify what progress NAEP actually tracks? How can philanthropy support more effective data collection? 

• Learn why politicians need to break the reactionary cycle to tests like NAEP. 

Fueled by NAEP’s reading and math results, a general narrative of 21st-century schooling has gradually taken shape: The first decade was one of big gains, the second decade one of stagnation. The question thus becomes, what went right in the first decade and/or wrong in the second? But I wonder if the foundation for all of this hypothesizing may be shakier than is generally assumed.

There are a bunch of possible reasons why scores move, not all of which reflect student learning. Reasons that scores might move can include:

  • Students may be learning more reading and math.
  • Students may be learning more in general. And the reading and math scores are a proxy for that.
  • Instructional effort is being shifted from untested subjects and activities to the tested ones.
  • Schools are focused on preparing kids for tests and engaged in test preparation so that the scores improve even if students aren’t learning.

It seems wholly plausible, for instance, that the first decade under NCLB saw scores go up—in some part—because schools were devoting enormous attention to reading and math instruction or test preparation, at the expense of other subjects and skills. If so, it’s a fair question as to what share of NAEP gains was a case of students learning “more” and how much was simply a product of a shift in instructional energy, attention, and focus. If this were the case, it would also cast results of the past decade in a rather different light.

Read the full article about NAEP scores by Frederick M. Hess at American Enterprise Institute.