Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute got an early release of the NAEP scores and did a good job of analyzing them.
https://edexcellence.net/articles/naep-2017-americas-lost-decade-of-educational-progress
A cheerleader for testing, accountability, and choice, he has to admit that the overview is bleak.
Minor bright spots, but overall stagnation.
He writes:
“As feared, the new results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that national trends are mostly flat. Coming on the heels of some modest declines in 2015, the 2017 scores amount to more bleak news. It’s now been almost a decade since we’ve seen strong growth in either reading or math, with the slight exception of eighth grade reading. There’s no way to sugarcoat these scores; they are extremely disappointing.”
The big gainers appear to be two of the lowest scoring jurisdictions: Mississippi and D.C.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As has been noted, in a stable system test scores should be flat over time. The only, perhaps interesting, exception might be where there is an artificially suppressed group where there has been a significant intervention. It’s not rational….it’s not a productivity model.
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Back in the early 1990s, it was widely assumed that the scale scores would and should remain stable, with the hope that low performing students would improve. I can’t place the exact date, but the new conventional wisdom was that this year’s fourth grade should post higher scores than the one tested two years earlier. Perhaps it was the NCLB mindset. Every student was supposed to be smarter and smarter even as achievement gaps closed. The basic assumption is nuts.
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Diane,
“The basic assumption is nuts.” YES, indeed! Has common sense gone away?
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Nuts indeed. OK, Mr. Petrilli, you want accountability? How about accountability for the UTTER FAILURE of the standards-and-testing regime?
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Time for Mr. Petrilli to admit that the magic elixir is snake oil. But he’s paid to think [sic] otherwise.
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These results undercut the oft-repeated claim that access to technology leads to higher scores. Many (most?) of these students have used technology since they were in diapers. Shouldn’t their NAEP scores have increased for that reason alone? Now that I think about it, SAT scores haven’t increased either. What a shocker — technology isn’t the magic learning bullet after all.
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The man is insufferable:
“The obvious question is why, and that’s something that NAEP can’t tell us. (Indeed, it’s NAEP’s job to give us the facts, not the underpinning explanations.) We can certainly identify hypotheses, but it’s going to take some time for scholars to gain access to restricted-use data and crunch the numbers to determine which hunches, conjectures, and justifications may hold water. Among the possibilities that make the most sense to me: the Great Recession, which negatively impacted school spending and also the home lives of a number of children; the backing away from test-based accountability, what with NCLB waivers followed by an “accountability pause” in many states as we transitioned to the Every Student Succeeds Act.”
This doesn’t seem like someone who has seen the light on Reform.
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Especially since it is very well established that test based accountability is an abject failure since it never had a snowballs chance in hell of doing what it claimed to be able to do. http://vamboozled.com/american-statistical-association-asa-position-statement-on-vams/
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You say âThe big gainers appear to be two of the lowest scoring jurisdictions: Mississippi and D.C.â
A perfect example, perhaps, of regression effect, rather than real growth?
âThe regression effect is a universal statistical phenomenon in which an attribute that is extreme on an initial measurement will tend to be closer toward the mean of a group on a subsequent. measurement⦠It is also known as statistical regression or regression toward the mean.
D
[cid:image001.png@01D3BFC6.11524330]
David C. Berliner
Regentsâ Professor Emeritus
Teachers College,
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85281
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exactly
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Noticing that NAEP scores are up, down, flat and for whom tells us nothing about why or what we can do to improve outcomes for more children. Too often responses to score releases are based on preconceived notions. Nonetheless, it is relatively clear that several decades of hyper-focus on consequential testing, standard, and hiring and firing teachers is not associated with the promised dramatic improvement. I wrote this several years ago after a similar the-sky-is-falling moment: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-camins/pisa-results-a-chicken-li_b_4404925.html I think it still applies.
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Notice that he considers the “accountability pause” a prime suspect for the results. Totally agree with your point about confirmation bias. These Ed Reform experts are so dishonest.
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“experts.” LOL. Now THAT’S funny!
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“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ‘pinions is.”
–Mark Twain
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It’s astonishing that anyone pays any heed, given the utter failure of the standards-and-testing regime, to the meretricious mouthpieces of the greedy silicon valley oligarchs who gave us this scam.
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I agree, except Petrilli answers to right wing billionaires like the DeVos family, the Koch family and the Waltons as well as right wing hedge fund billionaires who happily fund these think tanks to provide high paying jobs to people like Petrilli who have no heart or conscience but have managed to convince themselves they are taking their highly compensated jobs “for the kids” and not for their greed.
Making this only about “greedy silicon valley oligarchs” let’s some of the very worst people off the hook completely.
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The Koch brothers, to their credit, opposed the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] and nationalized testing. They didn’t much like the idea of the creation of a de facto national curriculum commissariat. I will make no comment on the other activities that they have engaged in. Too long a story and off the point.
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They are paid to pay heed.
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They are paid to be heed their masters and to be heedless about the damage they are doing. If Petrilli and the other geniuses at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation had any clue what is actually happening in English classes around the country–how test prep exercises and Coleman’s puerile list of “standards” have become the de facto curriculum, they wouldn’t be surprised at all about these results which were, at any rate, entirely predictable from the start. An entire generation of the testing madness has resulted in NO STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT INCREASE in scores, despite the unrelenting diet of test prep exercises that have supplanted the reading of novels and plays and the writing of papers and stories and poems. A curse on them for the damage they have done. It’s not innocent work. But they are clueless. They sit in their offices, these people, and say what they are paid to say.
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I don’t know if anyone in Petrilli’s shop has ever been a teacher.
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The pedestrian, unimaginative standards and the test question types from the tests have metastasized throughout our ELA pedagogy and curriculum, almost completely supplanting them. It’s a disaster. And it’s shameful that our Edupundits have not called the deformers out on this, but many of them, as well, have benefited enormously from the great river of green flowing from Gates’s coffers.
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The damage that such people have done to our nation’s schoolchildren and to the teaching of English language arts is incalculable. We used to teach English in the United States. Now, Gates’s and Coleman’s standards [sic] and test prep exercises have become the national ELA curriculum. It’s sickening, and after an entire generation of this, is long past time for people to wise up. I have no interest whatsoever in the sewage flowing from the propaganda ministry that goes under the name of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
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AGREE with you, Bob. It’s ALL just SO SICK and SICKENING. We are becoming Ameri-DUH, the not so great.
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Agree with you 100%. It’s the same for the math standards. Now the NGSS. This is why it is off to private HS for my 2nd child. I can’t stand the curriculum and what it has done to my children. The private schools (in my area) are providing the public school education of MY youth. The private schools are changing their school to model the old public school model to attract those fleeing the system. I’ve waited for change long enough and it hasn’t happened…..I have to pay to make it happen.
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Because of slavish adherence to the grade-by-grade standards, juniors in high school who can’t yet add and subtract fractions are forced to do math they can’t begin to fathom. And so they fail, and our tradition of innumeracy in the general adult population continues as before.
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And, ofc, the whole point of all of this was to drive people to flee the public schools.
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You’re right that it was/is the goal, but I have to do what is right for my 2nd child. I cannot allow him to wallow in test prep curriculum and subpar standards any longer. Getting through middle school has been a chore (behavior AND academics) and having another in public HS affords me the ability to see what lies ahead. I CANNOT sacrifice my 2nd child to public ed reform. I believe they actually read novels in catholic HS and they have fully stocked chem/bio labs, a full time librarian and school nurse. Wish I could say the same for public school.
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Very moving. Bless you for your commitment to your children!
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Lisa M,
That’s terrible that you have to go to a private school to get those things. I don’t blame you for switching if you can afford it.
There are NYC schools where students still read novels and have labs. Although I’m sure the ed reformers would be happy to change that if they could.
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My daughter takes GT Chemistry in HS. Their big and only actual experiment this year was burning sugar…..yes, household sugar! There are no chemicals in Chemistry class as they are too expensive and the gloves, aprons and goggles are also too expensive. They read about experiments. We have great funding and live in a very affluent community in the suburbs of DC. We have plenty of test prep, common core and HS is all about AP for everyone. It is absolutely dreadful what is being done to children and the parents politely comply thinking that living in a wealthy community affords them the best “innovations”. All we have is ed reform and no one sees it….but it’s all the fault of the teachers when little Jr. struggles (how the parents see it).
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“You tell me how much grit a child has and I’ll tell you what her lifetime earnings will be” — Angela Duckworth (inventor of the “Grit Scale”)
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Ofc lifetime earnings have NOTHING to do with what social class the child was born into. LOL. All it takes is pluck. Consult any US musical from the 1950s:
“Kid, you came into this town with nothing but a broken-down suitcase and a smile the size of Texas but you’re gonna be a star!”
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And English Department Chairperson recently told me, “I do test prep until the test is given in April. Then I have a month in which to teach English.”
And that’s pretty much the story nationwide.
Sickening.
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Bob Shepherd,
I don’t know what state you are in but your posts don’t reflect the reality of what I am seeing as a parent at NYC neighborhood public schools.
First of all, the state tests ends in 8th grade and there aren’t many “English Department Chairs” in elementary school and few in middle school.
Second, my child’s teachers are not spending the first 7 months of school on nothing but test prep. There is very little test prep until the last month, and then it isn’t over the top. It has always been like that.
I am not a fan of the common core state tests but you are offering comments that in no way reflect the reality that I see as a parent.
Maybe this is true in other states or in other public schools and my kid has just been lucky. But I doubt it very much.
Common Core does NOT mean that one has to do test prep all the time. I can’t help thinking that is a problem with the school administrators and ant English Department Chair I would never want anywhere near my child’s school.
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Even when it’s not called test prep, it typically is. The test and these backward standards have become the driver of pedagogy, of curricula, and of instructional materials development, nationwide.
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Prep for the state tests officially begins in February at my son’s elementary school and continues for the next two months. “Official” as in an announcement is sent out to the effect that test prep is beginning. Several years ago, when my daughter was attending the school (and before my son did), it started in December. I guess that’s progress. At my daughter’s middle school (she’s now in high school), I believe they were doing test prep from January onward.
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FLERP!,
At our neighborhood public school, saying that “test prep” is beginning does not mean the entire curriculum is turned over to test prep.
At most, it might mean that an hour a day is spent. Maybe the last month it is more, but not much more.
And in middle school, kids are taking at least 5 different classes. I would be shocked if your daughter’s ELA class did nothing but test prep from January onward. Unless you mean that reading novels and writing about them and discussing them is “test prep”. Most people think of “test prep” as getting worksheets of reading passages with multiple choice test questions to answer.
I would be very surprised if that was all that your child’s middle school did from January to April. That’s not what I’m seeing at all where I live. I would certainly be turned off if a teacher felt that students would be helped by doing nothing but reading passages, multiple choice questions, and perhaps some written responses for 3 months. What a complete waste. I’m sorry if that was your child’s experience for 3 years and hope your younger child finds a much better middle school.
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Thanks, FLERP! Your comments are always incisive and on point. Much appreciated.
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Glad someone thinks so!
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Bob’s not alone!
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A typical ELA lesson today is closely modeled on the tests. It involves having the student read a random short piece of isolated text and then answering questions on that text that have been designed in the form of the questions on the state test and based on one or more of Lord Coleman’s “standards.” The tail is wagging the dog, and this is nationwide, in almost all the print and online ELA curricula being produced and in the pedagogical approaches being enforced by administrators who are interested, first and foremost, on their test scores, which is the major factor in their evaluations.
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I’m in Howard County, MD (suburbs of DC). Our test prep starts in January and goes until the tests are over (around May) MS and HS. In elementary school they have reading for an hour and data analysis for 30-45 minutes every day…. Math the same thing. Not much social studies and hardly any time for science. Parents don’t realize that “data analysis” is code for test prep. This starts in Kindergarten. Yes…our test scores are crazy high and most of our parents are crazy pleased as punch, but the proof is in the pudding when lots of these kids aren’t cutting it in college and are coming home to live in the basement and try community college for a few semesters.
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Lisa M.,
I don’t understand why you have “test prep” in high school.
In New York State, the only high school exams are Regents exams. But NY State has had Regents Exams since I was a small child so I can hardly blame that on Common Core.
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NYC public school parent….We have PARCC (or SAT or AP scores) as a graduation requirement (ELA 10 and ALG I) along with a government test and a science test for graduation. We are totally immersed in Common Core. All of the classes at the HS level are transitioning to AP or the students sit and rot with a teacher as a babysitter….not lying!…my daughter opted not to take AP Gov and she sits in a class doing work that is given to 5th grade social studies students It’s AP classes and the push for students to take the AP tests. They want these kids to take 4-5 AP classes per years starting in 10th grade. The AP classes are test prep for the AP exam. It is dreadful, but the wealthy parents have partaken of the KoolAid.
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Lisa M,
Thanks for the informative reply. I’m sorry – that sounds awful!
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It’s even more insidious. The test prep has taken over the design of textbooks and online instructional materials. Every instructional materials developer begins every project, these days, with a list of the Common Core State Standards and a set of specs for the test questions on these and then correlates everything in the product to these. So, curriculum development isn’t done on the basis of what students need to learn and know but on the basis of what will get them ready for the tests. The new texts are appalling. One can look in vain, for example, in the chapter on the Puritan Era in the American Literature textbook for anything about how the Puritans and Pilgrims understood the world–but there is lots and lots of test prep based on Coleman’s puerile, content-free standards.
This is what I meant by using the metaphor of metastasis. Another appropriate metaphor would be of a fungal mycelium–the pedestrian standards and the test prep have spread like that throughout our ELA curricula and pedagogy, the bad pushing out the good. The opportunity costs of all this are staggering.
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If someone had given Coleman a copy of Galen in translation and of the 1858 edition of Gray’s Anatomy and had told him to write new standards for the medical profession based on these, one would have ended up with something like the retrograde, pedestrian, unimaginative, innovation-crushing, backward, and, yes, common (in the sense of base and vulgar) CCSS for ELA. These have stopped dead in its tracks any progress we have made in the teaching of English in the US. For just a little taste of how bad these “standards” are, see this: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/on-developing-curricula-in-the-age-of-the-thought-police/
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“The Colemanatomy” (coming soon,
to a hospital near you)
The toe bone’s connected to the skull
bone,
The skull bone’s connected to the ankle
bone,
The ankle bone’s connected to the hip
bone,
And that’s how the body works
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This little poem captures well, I think, what has happened to ELA since the introduction of Coleman’s sloppy, puerile “standards” and of draconian accountability measures tied to the pseudoscientific state tests:
My teachers should have ridden with Jessie James
For all the time they stole from me.
–Richard Brautigan
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Compared to Billy the Gates
Billy the Kid was great
— SomeDAM Poet
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No holding my breath waiting for Petrilli to admit teachers knew best, and still do.
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You will NEVER hear Petrilli admit he (and his ilk) were wrong. He lives in his Ivory Tower.
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Actually, Petrilli was not smart enough for the ivory tower. Far too dumb to be a professor.
He lives in a fake ivory tower made of cheap plastic.
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“Because of slavish adherence to the grade-by-grade standards, juniors in high school who can’t yet add and subtract fractions are forced to do math they can’t begin to fathom. And so they fail, and our tradition of innumeracy in the general adult population continues as before. ” See Bob Shepard comment above.
Jenny was one of my students. She could not do basic math, but she was in Algebra II because of the diploma project several years ago. Soon after we were forced to grant her a diploma due to NCLB scrutiny of graduation rate, she took a test to enter a programs in the tech med field. She failed to enter the program because she could not do fractions.
You are as right, Bob, as any human being has ever been.
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It should be a scandal that the Fordham Institute gets an early release of NAEP scores. It is an unelected, unaccountable, mercenary, private group.
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As a former board member of NAEP and as a prominent blogger, I hoped to get an early NAEP release. I didn’t.
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