The accountability hawks have decided that NAEP testing must be canceled this spring because of the pandemic, but the burdensome, useless, meaningless annual testing of every single student from grades 3-8 should not be disrupted. Betsy DeVos proposed canceling NAEP, and the director of the National Center for Education Statistics complied. There will be no NAEP 2021.
This is backwards.
If we want to understand the impact of the coronavirus on American students, NAEP testing should go forward. NAEP—the National Assessment of Educational Progress—has been administered to scientific samples of American students since the late 1960s. Since 1992, it has provided state-by-state comparisons. It disaggregates scores by race, gender, income, English language status, disability status, and other criteria. It measures achievement gaps among whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. It supplies the same valuable information for a score of urban district that volunteer to be tested. No stakes are attached to NAEP results.
In short, NAEP is the ideal gauge for measuring the impact of the coronavirus on students in every state and many cities.
The tests that should be canceled are the state tests mandated by ESSA, which every student in grades 3-8 is required to take. Many students will opt out. The scores rank students on a meaningless axis from advanced, proficient, basic, to below basic, or rank them 1-4. The mandated tests tell teachers nothing worth knowing since they mainly reflect family income and education. They do not tell teachers anything about what students know and understand since teachers are not permitted to see the questions or to know how students answered them. The results of these tests, useless as they are, have high stakes. They will be used to punish or reward students, teachers, and schools.
Yet NAEP will be postponed, and the state tests for individuals will go forward this spring! The meaningful measure will be canceled but the punitive and meaningless measure will be preserved.
Politico reported:
HITTING PAUSE ON THE NATION’S REPORT CARD — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos before Thanksgiving added another item to Congress’ to-do list, calling on lawmakers to postpone upcoming national tests that gauge student achievement in reading and math. DeVos said it would be impractical to conduct the National Assessment of Educational Progress, originally slated for January, during the pandemic because “too few schools will be providing in-school instruction or welcoming outside test administrators this winter to ensure a sufficiently large sample.”
— DeVos said in a letter to congressional leaders that she was halting any further expenditures to prepare for the federal assessments. But she urged Congress to include legislation in any year-end government spending deal to “lift the mandate for 2021 NAEP administration and postpone the administration of NAEP tests until the assessment will be able to produce useful results, likely in 2022.”
— It appears that DeVos’ request has bipartisan support. The Democratic leaders on the congressional education committees, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said in a joint statement that postponing NAEP was “unfortunate” but also “understandable” given the circumstances. And Sen. Lamar Alexander(R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate education committee, said DeVos made “the right decision” and that Congress should act quickly to provide the one-year delay. “I will work with my colleagues to secure congressional approval of this request in the remaining weeks of the year,” Alexander said.
If NAEP had been administered in 2021, it would have told policy makers precisely what they want to know, at a cost of about $50 million.
If the individual tests are administered, with large numbers of students absent due to the pandemic or opting out in protest, it will provide no useful results but cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Why would DeVos cancel the efficient measure while imposing the pointless measure?
For sure, it’s a win for the test producers but a loss for students, teachers, and common sense.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NAEP should not be canceled. Spring tests should not be canceled (for the second year in a row).
You want to throw your children’s teachers and principals under the bus so that you can fret yourself into a tizzy (for the second year in a row) over meaningless scores? Really? Well, jump on board with the one and only Cruella DeVos! Really! Believe in whatever superstitious data analytics nonsense you wish, but I hope Joe “I Will End Standardized Testing” Biden is paying attention to what NOT to do, by Betsy.
I have an idea.
All people who work as “scholars” in education reform think tanks and advocacy organizations should take the 8th grade ELA and Math exams from last June. They should take them this week.
The 20% of scholars in those think tanks who receive the lowest scores will be summarily fired.
That will insure that those ed reform think tanks get better.
The remaining 80% of “scholars” at those ed reform think tanks will take the 9th grade NY State Common Core Algebra Regents in January, and the bottom 20% scoring scholars will be summarily fired.
That will make those education reform think tanks even more superior.
In just 3 months, those think tanks (without their “lowest performing scholars”) will be so much better than they are right now.
At least, that’s what those scholars keep telling us is true.
The only way to make those ed reform think tanks better is to have every scholar take those tests THIS WEEK and fire the 20% with the lowest scores.
Yep.
I think ed reformers should have to make their case on testing this year.
They all pronounce that testing is necessary and useful for policymakers, but the 20 year ed reform record on practical or useful or relevant support or assistance of existing public schools is terrible.
Can they tell us, specifically, how the ed reform echo chamber has used these test scores to improve, support or assist any public school, anywhere?
We know they all lockstep support testing. What’s in it for PUBLIC school students? Why should parents support it? Can they point to something specific they have accomplished based on or informed by testing tens of millions of our students?
Say we agree to test public school students and we find that many students have lost ground during the pandemic. What does ed reform do differently based on the new information they gather? Will they give us something different than they have for the last 20 years? Or will the response be “more charters and vouchers”, as it always is?
The greedy privatizers need a “bottom” to justify closing schools and taking over the students, even though there is no evidence that the disruption does anything positive for poor students.
You should speak before the Education Committee once Biden takes office.
This is what you get when ed reform captures your governor and state legislature:
“Ohio’s private school voucher program will change yet again for 2021-22, after the House and Senate approved Senate Bill 89 on party-line votes last week.
Under the program, students from kindergarten through high school can get taxpayer-funded vouchers (EdChoice scholarships) to pay for private school tuition if they are in one of two categories — students from low-income families, or students whose home public schools are deemed underperforming.”
As usual, nothing at all for the 90% of students in this state who attend public schools.
Year after year after year, the only thing that gets accomplished in this state on K-12 education is the list of demands by the ed reform lobby- expansion and increased funding for charters and vouchers. Year after year after year 90% of Ohio students are either denigrated or ignored.
2020 will end just like 2016, 17, 18, and 19 did- nothing at all accomplished that benefits or is even relevant to 90% of students and families in this state.
This is what happens when the DC lobbyists at Fordham run your state education policy- public school students and families are the last priority.
No wonder the ed reform echo chamber focuses on testing- they offer nothing else to any public school student or family.
https://www.journal-news.com/news/new-law-expands-private-school-voucher-program-in-ohio-how-it-will-work/PQY7UWZQSZFD3D2O45S2KTUDOM/
Very hard to get a random sample of students to take the NAEP [or the state tests] when so many are engaged in remote learning at home.
States should strike a bargain with the ed reform lobby in DC.
We’ll test public school students this year but only if there are specific provisions that benefit PUBLIC school students when the results come back. If this is going to be another year where this group insists students be tested and then push the same stale agenda when the test scores come back there’s no benefit to public school students and they shouldn’t be forced to spend 2 weeks on it.
Using our kids test scores to attack and weaken our schools is a bad deal for public school students and families. Insist on a better deal. What are the specific, positive, relevant policies that benefit public schools that will come out of this testing and how can we be assured ed reformers won’t renege on the promises they make, as they did in NCLB and RttT? If ed reformers can’t answer that, then public school students shouldn’t be forced to comply.
Ed reform says they are student centered. Does that apply to students in public schools or only to the schools they find ideologically acceptable; charters and private schools?
Testing will be much more difficult for schools this year. There’s no discussion in ed reform about the schools that OPENED this fall, but it’s been difficult to STAY open because there are rolling, constant quarantines that affect X number of staff and students in any given week.
My son’s public school, right now, has 80 students out due to exposure and quarantine and 7 staff members. It has been like this all year.
Scolding public schools to “open!” does not actually do anything to address the problems that arise when schools open but maybe that’s the point. Maybe no one in ed reform really wants to ACTUALLY assist public schools but instead want to run a political campaign to eradicate them all.
90% of kids in this state attend public schools, public schools are valiantly trying to remain open in a pandemic, and what do we get out of the ed reform lobby in Columbus? Another massive new voucher expansion.
Useless. Utterly irrelevant to 90% of students and schools.
As I read this, there’s a breathless report on MSNBC about a “NWEA report” that students “are falling behind in their test scores” due to the pandemic. In the lead up the “reporter,” Vicky Nguyen, noted that “reading scores are actually going up” (imagine that!) but math scores are down as the hyperventilating report proceeds to focus on a “sky is falling” narrative. She does say that if parents are concerned, they should talk to their children’s teachers. Well, duh! How in the world did this nation ever progress through centuries of having no standardized testing and so much independent learning? But one year of breaking with routine is the end of the world. The world, I tell ya!
That’s all the scores will be used for- breathless recitations of the “all public schools are failing” narrative.
We don’t need tests for that. They all do it no matter what the scores say.
I’m not anti-testing. I just think it’s time that the people who promote testing explain, specifically and in detail, how testing benefits students. They’re promoting it. They’re going to have to do more than scold public schools about it.
If the testing is for “equity”, broadly, and is used to find groups of students who are not being served by schools (the argument I find most persuasive) and DOESN’T benefit individual students (except in the aggregate) then just say that.
Just lay it out. Why should we do this? What will ed reform DO with the information our students are mandated to provide?
Just a ploy to scare the parents. It’s much easier to develop/sell ed-tech for “the Maths” than for an ELA curriculum. Just another ploy to keep the deform vultures rolling in money.
The predictions in the “NWEA report” (NorthWest Education Association) and another from Bellwether Education Partners are part of the Walton-funded 74Million propaganda machinery. As for the cancelled NAEP tests, it is good to remember that these would have been for the only two subjects that have mattered for more than a century: reading and math.
NPR had a story this am about the NWEA report.
Frankly, in what do reformers actually have expertise?
We know at bottom most Reformers are about privatization. They have a cult like worship of capitalism, sponsored by Reagan during their childhood I suppose. It does not seem they have read all of Adam Smith.
They also, techy or not, seem not to have any understanding of educational testing , something not difficult to gain. Otherwise NAEP would be retained and state tests delayed. Or they do understand, and know they can fool the public.
“Why would DeVos cancel the efficient measure while imposing the pointless measure?”
Easy answer. DeVos, like Trump, does not like any facts that point out how wrong and ignorant she is. She’d prefer to have alternative facts from unreliable sources that she can cherry-pick to support what she wants to do with public education, destroy it.
With the Trumpian GOP party moving further into conspiracy theory land and alternative facts (lies), they cannot afford the truth based on real facts getting out revealing how corrupt they are.