Those of you who have followed this blog for many years know that I don’t put much stock in twelfth grade NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores. Having served for seven years on the NAEP governing board (the National Assessment Governing Board), I know that twelfth graders are a perennial problem. Unlike students in fourth and eighth grades, the seniors know the test doesn’t count. They are not motivated.
Bearing that in mind, it is nonetheless surprising that the recently released NAEP 12th grade reading and math scores have barely budged since 2005.
Even if kids aren’t trying hard, their scores should have gone up if they were actually better educated.
I argued in Slaying Goliath that NAEP scores for fourth and eighth grade have been flat for the past decade. And these kids are doing their best.
NAEP scores show the abject failure of “education reform” inflicted on students and educators since passage of No Child Left Behind. NCLB, Race to the Top, VAM, charter schools, vouchers, merit pay, Common Core: a massive failure.
It’s time to throw out the status quo. It’s time for a new vision. It’s time to respect educators and stop tying their hands and giving them scripts. It’s time to end the regime of test and publish.
Are you listening, Joe Biden?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Those reforms are actually DEFORMS.
Ed Reformers claim that these numbers show that No Child Left Behind was working (surprise, surprise):
https://www.the74million.org/twelfth-grade-naep-scores-offer-more-bad-news-for-reading-stagnation-in-math/
Nobody in the government wants to look seriously at the impact of privatization. Too many politicians act as though they are on “auto-pilot” where the assumption is that choice has inherent value. There is zero evidence that choice systems improve education. What we do know for fact is that choice systems undermine the public system that most students attend. Public students wind up in larger classes with fewer supports, and buildings that are in a constant state of disrepair. Students in public schools see electives and advanced classes cut so other students can pursue a choice system that has failed to improve education and increases segregation. Privatization robs Peter to pay Paul. It makes no sense! This is not a recipe for success.
We need to invest in quality public schools that provide wrap around support services to struggling students and families. Testing is no solution to poverty. All testing does is reveal those families have more and those that have less. We may not be able to eliminate poverty, but we may be to mitigate the impact of poverty on young people in public schools.
Mike Petrelli of the Fordham Institute pontificates about these NAEP scores: “When it comes to America’s achievement trends, the bad news keeps coming. As we previously saw at the fourth grade and eighth grade levels, the just-released 2019 twelfth grade results in math and reading were mostly flat or down across the board, as well, with particularly sharp declines for our lowest-performing students in reading.”
“There’s no sugarcoating it. This does not bode well for this generation’s economic prospects, or the future of our country. But we shouldn’t be surprised.”
Petrelli’s belief that test scores on NAEP are tied to the economy and future of the country is a good case of misplaced thinking in midst of a global pandemic and at least two decades of test-em-til-they-drop policies along with the Bill Gates funded Common Core imposed on students as if the greatest thing in the whole wide world. Petrelli talks about variations and trend lines in test scores in two subjects as if these determined the fate of the world and nothing else was a danger to our economy and our democracy. See more if you can stand it at https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/about-those-12th-grade-naep-scores-cake-was-mostly-baked-years-ago
On matters of education, I hope Joe Biden does NOT listen to anyone from the Fordham Institute.
The so-called “skills gap” that Silicon Valley has been promulgating is pure nonsense. Companies want access to cheap, non-union labor. It has nothing to do with how prepared American students are. It is billionaire mythology. We have lots of well prepared young people that cannot find work because companies are not hiring.
Our government has sold out our young people and our teachers. Young people saddled with college debt cannot buy homes, and working two minimum wage jobs barely pays the bills. Biden even said his granddaughter with a law degree from U. of Penn was having trouble landing a job. Biden, should he win, needs to work on rebuilding what is left of the middle class. Our problems have little to do with how students score on standardized tests.
Well said. Test scores are the least of our problems.
cheap, non-union labor. Reform in three words?
The supposed STEM shortage is a fraud that was created out of whole cloth by tech companies in order to keep wages down and import cheap labor from abroad.
I saw this first hand when I was looking for work in the tech sector. There were jobs for which I was well qualified but never even got an interview.
And most of the large tech companies have full time employees whose entire job consists in finding cheap engineers abroad , getting them H1b visas and bringing them to the US.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-why-government-universities-industry-create-domestic-labor-shortages-of-scientists-high-tech-workers
Education is not a business enterprise. Putting businesses in charge of teachers was the dumbest idea anyone ever had. Just stupid. Academia should be done by academics. You don’t put the football team in charge of the physics lab. Duh!
Joe Biden has made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. He needs to correct his mistakes. Get the money mongers off our backs, Joe. Come on, Joe! Do the right thing for once.
Maybe we should..
No offense, of course. I love sports.
Left Coast.. both sides have been corrupted by Bill and Melinda. Nothing-of substance was addressed or mentioned concerning education during the presidential and vice presidential debates- nothing! Why aren’t our union leaders calling both parties out for this slight? Because they’ve been bought! The hubris is unbelievable. “We get the leaders we deserve.”
If Mr. Biden does get elected, we have to hold his feet to the fire more vigorously than the GOP does. He is, after all, a corporate Democrat and was perfectly comfortable serving in an administration with the despicable Arne Duncan.
I saw an interview with AOC. She said that if Biden wins, she and the progressives will go to work to push Biden to keep his promises. She also said they will fight to ensure there is a balance of moderates and progressives on his team.
Thanks, Diane, for keeping these issues alive! Thanks also for providing this forum. As a retired teacher/union staffer, it’s so very frustrating to see the direction education has gone. I went to school in Flint, Mi, when that city was prosperous (1950’s). We had some great, progressive programs there, then. I finished in Portsmouth, Ohio, which also was doing some good things–graduating in ’55. My finishing school was the US Army (remember the draft). Then a BS in ed. and Masters in ed. adm. (Ohio State). Attended evening law school, but was “drafted” by Cols. Ed. Assn. to be chief negotiator. In Columbus we negotiated: 1. Alternative, magnet schools, 2. Eliminated “warehousing” study halls. 3. A city-wide advisory, with students and teachers meeting with adms. and board members. 4. Assisted in desegregation of staff and students, etc.
All that (and much more) was real education “reform.” Similar things we happening in various places around the country–progressive changes.
I left education for other work, and when I returned to the classroom in ’89, Presidents Bush & Clinton were saddling schools with the impossible, unnecessary, & unrealistic “Goals 2000.” “Every child will come to school ready to learn.” That would take Bernie’s political revolution and more. The US will be first in math–why?
That movement and the stuff that followed were seemingly designed to 1. Stop the teacher union movement and 2. Help integrate and equalize our ed. opportunities. The first goal (unspoken) is obviously corporate-power driven, and the 2nd driven by liberals (of which I’m one) wanting to shortcut all other factors and have schools do the impossible of equalizing opportunity and outcomes.
I’m hoping that a Biden administration would help with equalizing funding and get off the testing, privatization nonsense. But who knows. If Mr. T is re-elected we are likely to see much more religion in our schools, with less funding and much less science. Unions are likely to be quashed:
No Child Race to the Top
by Jack Burgess
Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams die,
life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
Langston Hughes
If up were down, and black were white,
if Jesus were Satan, and you made a sect
of that, if yin were yang,
blood came from turnips,
and penciling bubbles was as
beautiful as painting
or singing, or god forbid,
daydreaming–or writing poetry–
it would be possible to combine “No Child
Left Behind” with “Race to the Top.”
If John Dewey were alive today
he’d be turning over in his grave.
Learn by doing, his legacy,
so kids today learn to take tests,
learn to get grades,
learn how little
we value them,
how bright we are.
We who sang songs,
read poems, wrote essays,
leave them the brain bending,
standardized,
multiple guess.
No wonder they turn away
to the electronic matrix,
taught that Reagan the Great
was the beginning of history.
Schools will be fracked,
will be squeezed until
profits ooze out,
but can the imaginations
of childhood be wrung dry
for corporate greed?
Will children really stop
gazing at the moon
and loving one another
for either political party?
Or just burrow more deeply
into the sweetness of cyber space?
Orwellian logic would have
it that love finds a way
when Big Brother is not looking.
Jack,
Thank you for the memories, much like my own. And your poem.
Diane
finally, a DR comment re the truth of the 40-year NAEP history of dismal Proficiency (non) achievement scores. Next question: why are parents and Boards tolerating this clearly inadequate level of management from their district CEO’s, who seem to prefer focussing on anything else, from school gardens to sexual preference?
Martin Harris
? I have made similar comments many times.
Having worked for Westat (NAEP) and tested for several years, the problems there begin with the first day of training, reading scripts to new employees for 5 days! The process is flawed but a gold mine for a few at the top. The professional culture is to never, ever complain, which is why, in some places, harassment is ignored.