Unintended Consequences
The folks who designed the No Child Left Behind legislation no doubt had their collective hearts in the right place, but they neglected to take human nature into account. After all, increasing student learning isn’t the only way to meet proficiency goals. Another way is to define down what it means to be proficient. And that’s just what many states have done.
For instance:
Delaware’s News Journal reports that its state test scores indicate a level of proficiency that students haven’t really met.
According to the News Journal, 77% of Delaware’s fourth graders were proficient on the state math test, compared to 36% proficiency on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Similarly, in reading, 81% of the eighth graders passed the state test, compared to 31% proficiency on the NAEP.
The NAEP, nicknamed the nation’s report card, is the only test that measures student learning across the states. In almost all states, students perform better on their state tests than they do on the NAEP, an indication of just how low many state standards are.
As Paul Peterson and Carlos Xabel Lastra-Anadón explain at Education Next:
States have strong incentives not to set world-class standards. If they do, more of their schools will be identified as failing under NCLB rules, and states will then be required to take corrective actions to bring students’ performance up to the higher standard. As a result, the temptation for states to “lowball expectations” is substantial. Perhaps for this reason, a sharp disparity between NAEP standards and the standards in most states has been identified in all of our previous reports. In 2009, the situation improved in reading, but deteriorated further in math.
Check out their full report for a state-by-state comparison with NAEP scores.
