Jan Resseger is consistently the voice of wisdom on anything related to children and young people. In this post, she explains why we should not be panicked by the decline of NAEP scores. The scores reflected the toll that the pandemic exacted. But now that children are back in school, we can expect learning to proceed without major disruption.
She writes:
I think this year’s NAEP scores—considerably lower than pre-pandemic scores—should be understood as a marker that helps us define the magnitude of the disruption for our children during this time of COVID. The losses are academic, emotional, and social, and they all make learning harder….
Education Week’s Sarah Schwartz asked Stanford University professor Sean Reardon (whose research tracks the connection of poverty and race to educational achievement) whether “it will take another 20 years to raise scores once again.” Reardon responded: “That’s the wrong question…. The question is: What’s going to happen for these (9-year-old) kids over the next years of their lives.” Schwartz describes more of Reardon’s response: “Children born now will, hopefully, attend school without the kinds of major, national disruptions that children who were in school during the pandemic faced. Most likely, scores for 9-year-olds, will be back to normal relatively soon, Reardon said. Instead, he said, we should look to future scores for 13-year-olds, which will present a better sense of how much ground these current students have gained.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How nice of you to forward this around, Diane!
Jan Resseger
https://janresseger.wordpress.com/ https://janresseger.wordpress.com/
“That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children…. is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination…. It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose… tied to one another by a common bond.” —Senator Paul Wellstone, March 31, 2000
Thank you, Ms. Resseger!
Thanks for reading and for your encouragement!
Always enjoy your work. Thank you for your wisdom and compassion for kids and teachers!
Spot on reasoning.
NAEP is a well designed assessment that is illegitimate. The results and break down of responses is never provided to teachers or students. This goes against the justification for a test to begin with. In my experience observing this process it is seen by most students as a boring break from the school routine. Few students take it seriously. Therefore, it is the perfect foil for a political agenda that wants to proclaim public education is not worth the expense and it promotes the ongoing lazy journalism that so enjoys playing chicken little. Yes, the mediocre scores will recover, but they won’t mean a damn thing to the students it is supposed to serve.
“Yes, the INVALID mediocre scores will recover, but they won’t mean a damn thing to the students it is supposed to serve.”
But besides the invalidity issues that make using any and all standardized test results “vain and illusory” as Wilson puts it. . . bullshit the way I put it, you bring up a fundamental point of what any assessment should be in regards to “the students it is supposed to serve.”
That fundamental concern is: All assessments of student work should be designed to help each individual student learn more about where he/she is in regards to their own learning of the subject matter.
All other reasons are bogus, especially those of sorting and ranking students into groups or categories. The fact that the students are not allowed to see their results from each and every question, that they don’t get to evaluate their own responses shows that the fundamental concern is not addressed at all in the standardized testing malpractice regime.
And that my friends is ethically unacceptable and not just.
“To take advantage of a child’s naivete. . . in order to extract from them something [test scores, personal information] that is contrary to their interests, or intentions, without their knowledge [or consent of parents] or through coercion [state mandated testing], is always and everywhere unjust even if in some places and under certain circumstances it is not illegal. . . . Justice is superior to and more valuable than well-being or efficiency; it cannot be sacrificed to them, not even for the happiness of the greatest number [quoting Rawls]. To what could justice legitimately be sacrificed, since without justice there would be no legitimacy or illegitimacy? And in the name of what, since without justice even humanity, happiness and love could have no absolute value?. . . Without justice, values would be nothing more than (self) interests or motives; they would cease to be values or would become values without worth.”—Comte-Sponville [my additions]
Imagine that, Duane. Imagine assessment as a taking stock by the student for the student of where he or she is. Imagine testing as a formative learning experience. Imagine it having ANY usefulness whatsoever.
And while you are at it, while you are dreaming the impossible dream, imagine one of these Ed Deformers, one of these proponents of the state standardized testing, actually bothering to learn anything about the tests. Imagine them taking one and having their scores published.
Paul Bonner–
1.That “results and breakdown of responses is never provided to teachers or students” comes with the territory. This is perhaps our only national test that follows what American Statistical Assocn described back in 2014 as the only appropriate use for standardized tests– a thumbnail allowing broad-brush comparisons of schsystems from one region to another. Why would that sort of anonymous test score, part of a national representative sample, be reported back to teachers or students? Results are not about individual achievement.
NAEP is a needed counter-narrative to the annual state-stdzd NCLB/ESSA tests tied to school funding, whose results are jimmied via cut-scores to assure continued funding. Sure, those state-stdzd test scores—regardless of whatever this yr’s testing co drummed up to make themselves look better than last yr’s testing co [so results obviously not comparable] are reported back to teachers/ students/ schools – how does that help the school? Are you trying to tell me the school can take something from this to “improve” scores next year? Do you actually connect these test scores to the kids’ ed achievement??
2.” In my experience observing this process it is seen by most students as a boring break from the school routine. Few students take it seriously.” I would propose that this is the exact same thing, whether NAEP periodic sample tests, or year in year out NCLB/ ESSA state-stdzd tests of all students. No doubt NAEP sample group students have felt the same way since those tests started in 1969. So what? NAEP assessment goals are different from annual state-stdzd assessments. Read more at the website. Conditions of administration are the same.
Bethree5,
In the past many posters have been concerned that these tests harmed student well being because they placed a great deal of stress on the students. Your point 2 suggests that you do not agree that the NCLB/ESSA tests are stressful for students. Is that correct?
TE,
The problem with the NCLB/ESSA tests is not that they are stressful but that they measure family income more than student ability. The testing system is horrible because it causes narrowing of the curriculum only to what is tested. It incentivizes cheating. It displaces the goals of education to focus only on the measure. Ever heard of Campbell’s Law? Look it up.
My point is that because we have no real idea what is in the test or how they came to conclusions about grade level proficiency means that from the perspective of students the test serves no purpose. It’s very difficult to get a meaningful snapshot of student proficiency when they see little value in the exercise. I understand the “tests an measurements” justification for the test, but in the current test heavy instructional environment, NAEP tells us little about student capability.
TE– no, I agree the state-stdzd tests create stress on admin/ teachers, whose stress affects students. I’ve also read that many students are stressed by them personally as well, & believe it.
I was responding narrowly to PB’s observation that students who are part of the NAEP sample are bored/ unmotivated by them, & didn’t see how that was germane in comparing the two tests; I’ve heard the same thing about the state-stdzd tests. But I’m probably mixing apples & oranges: likely the NAEP tests are not stressful, just boring, whereas many are reported to find the annual state-stdzd tests stressful.
Paul, I still have to push back on that. I can imagine that some students feel the NAEP’s are pointless; perhaps this causes those students not to take them seriously. But we have no stats for that. I would be concerned if NAEP administers the test over & over to the same schools/ students, instead of changing up the sample every year or two. Did that happen to your students?
Bethree5,
You have rethought your proposal that “this is the exact same thing, whether NAEP periodic sample tests, or year in year out NCLB/ ESSA state-stdzd tests of all students.”? I took the “this” of your statement to refer to the observations that students do not care about the NAEP exams. Was that incorrect?
Is there really sych a thing as a “national representative sample” for the US, given all the variation from one city, town and even region to the next?
And even if there were such a thing (which I seriously doubt), what good would it be because curriculum is not decided on a national basis. In fact. Federal lea forbids it.
If NAEP is not of any value to teachers or individual students, who precisely is it if value to and for what purpose?
If NAEP results produced a dialogue that advocated for better support for teaching and teachers, it would have some value. However, the ongoing drum beat of chicken littles who see a 1% drop in performance as a crisis, after a pandemic no one was prepared to handle, has simply served as ammo for deformers who want public schools dismantled. Data at 35,000 feet serves no purpose if no one takes the time to understand what got the plane in the air.
Whether intended or not. It would certainly appear that the primary use of NAEP is for people either to complain about how the kids are not learning (when the scores remain flat or go down) r to brag that they are learning.(when the scores go up)
Other than that, it does not seem to have produced anything of value.
And who decided that NAEP means something anyway? The people who wrote the test?
Why not just have a public official draw a straw every two years from a set of seven straws of increasing length?
If the straw with the middle length is drawn report that NAEP scores remained flat.
If a straw with length above or below the middle length is drawn, increase or decrease the NAEP scores by 1 or 2 units, depending on the length of the straw..
Then let people argue about what to do — wring their hands and gasp or celebrate.
Practically speaking, how would that be any different from what is currently happening?
Increase /decrease by 1,2 or 3 units
The hilarious (albeit pathetic) part of the whole thing is that the NAEP board seems to spend most of its time chastising people for misusing their categories (proficient and all the rest), when they certainly should have known that that is pre isely what would happen.
SDP,
NAEP used to report scores on a scale of 0-500. That didn’t make headlines.
When Checker Finn was chair of the NAEP board (the National Assessment Governing Board), he came up with the idea of reporting “achievement levels”: basic, proficient, advanced.
Below basic was very poor performance. Proficient was outstanding. Advanced was A++.
The media assumed that “proficient” was grade level. It’s not. The idea behind achievement levels was to alarm the public about public schools. It worked. The Common Core adopted the NAEP achievement levels. The closest equivalent to below grade level is “below basic.” A small number.
Hahaha, TE, I think I confused myself too.
First time around, “this” did refer to PB-observed student indifference/ not trying on NAEP tests. I was mistakenly inserting how I personally would have reacted the same way to NCLB tests, knowing they have no effect on my report card, I never get to see corrected test, score is conveyed via opaque number-code. But then you reminded me that NCLB testing in fact is reported to stress out a lot of students.
So, second time around, I was pushing back against PB’s implication that NAEP is not a reality-check on NCLB test scores—that even tho well-designed, it’s not a good measure of what the sampled students can do, because they have no stakes in results. What I should have said is, maybe, maybe not. Maybe 8th & 12th graders feel that; I doubt 4th graders do [and those are the scores addressed in Diane’s post].
I think the bottom line is, all stzd tests for purposes of govt data collection have the potential to bore or stress out test-takers; we don’t know how many, or the effect on scores. For my $, NAEP is worth hanging onto because (a) unlike NCLB tests, we can compare results over years [same testing entity, with consistent approach] and (b)they don’t pretend to be any more than what they are, a rough indicator of national trend.
Diane – so Checker Finn came up with those descriptors sometimes in the mid-‘90s. You said Common Core adopted them: what does that mean? We don’t see below basic, basic or advanced reported on state stds-aligned stdzd test scores, just “proficient.” At some state ed site recently [my own (NJ)?] I read that proficient = at or above grade level– they even pointed out that NAEP proficient was different.
Common Core wasn’t adopted until 2010. But didn’t states start using term “proficiency” [= at or above grade level] to describe the NCLB annual test scores in the early 2000’s? My only point being – I’d always thought it was the state ed depts that caused this confusion by adopting established NAEP descriptor for “outstanding” and defining it per the NAEP “basic” descriptor.
NAEP started using “achievement levels” in 1992. They were and are controversial. Many scholarly groups denounced them as @fundamentally flawed.” Congress tagged them as “trial” levels, but they have never been revised or eliminated. The public thinks “proficient”=grade level, or “pass/fail.” The media report them as pass/fail. When the Common Core testing consortia met to describe how to report results, both PARCC and SBAC decided to adopt NAEP achievement levels. I describe this in one of my last books—either “Reign of Error” or “Slaying Goliath.” It was originally reported in EdWeek. I’ll find it and let you know. The NAEP levels are completely inappropriate for state tests, and they overstate failure rates when “proficiency” determines the pass rate. That’s equivalent to saying that anyone who did not score at least a B+ failed.
Thanks, Diane!
I wonder what the effect of the pause of Mandatory 3rd Grade retention had on NAEP scores? In Florida, we held students harmless and did not retain based on test scores during the years disrupted by the pandemic. If you no longer retain your lowest performers in 3rd grade, should you expect some decline in 4th grade NAEP scores? (Obviously, the disruption from the pandemic is a major influence and the entire decline is not related to lack of 3rd grade retention, but I am curious to see comparisons between states who paused retention policies and those who did not – or never had them to begin with.)
Good point, Ms. Woltanski!
I think there is a move to imitate this in Tennessee
It’s horrific. So utterly stupid. So cruel and counterproductive. Kids are on vastly differing developmental schedules. And many, from the poorest homes, come into school already behind, way, way behind. So what do the deformers want to do about this? Punish the kids who haven’t caught up. Stigmatize them. Tell them at freaking 8 years old that they are failures. Hang a label on them when we have known for 3/4ths of a century about the Pygmalion Effect–about the self-fulfilling nature of these labels.
Another brilliant idea for which to thank the Bill and Melinda Foundation for the Devolution of U.S. Education.
“I wonder what the effect of the pause of Mandatory 3rd Grade retention had on NAEP scores?”
I don’t give a damn about that supposed effect. Playing with the results of invalid processes-NAEP can only net one more invalidity. . . it’s mental masturbation plain and simple. . . good for a cheap temporary thrill that means nothing.
Well, it would only be an issue to examine in the few states [8?] that follow that policy – and that’s just one year’s data (or two?) for those kids, who have already reverted to the usual state policy. You will be able to analyze when NAEP comes out with state-by-state results later this year. I’m not sure that’s enough data to get a handle on it, though, depending on how long your state has been doing that
This teacher, whose article was featured on Curmuducation, has terrific common sense solution to our lagging academics. In a nutshell she recommends getting out the teachers’ way and give them the freedom to teach. Listen to teachers and support them, and in doing so, districts will be supporting their students. Her solution is a laundry list that is completely “doable,” and her recommendations are spot on, in my opinion.https://3rdmillenniumteacher.blogspot.com/2022/09/let-teachers-fix-this-they-know-how.html
“freedom to teach.” Wouldn’t it be nice to see that on signs at the strikes — and staying on strike until the demand was answered….
I just saw your book, Ciedie! I have to order a copy. I am completely, utterly in love with the title!!!!!!
🙂 some people really like the book, other people think it was written by a crazy woman. I wonder what you’ll think….
Haaaa! I’ll let you know!
“. . . has terrific common sense solution to our lagging academics.”
Lagging academics???
Really??
When did you become an edudeformer?? ;-(
Using the language of those who seek to destroy public education is not a good course of action.
Great link. Need a school whose admin would get behind these common-sense recommendations.
“Long-term trend data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 9-year-old students scored, on average, five points lower in reading and seven points lower in math in 2022 than did their pre-pandemic peers in 2020. The declines represent the largest drops in decades.”
That’s because the NAEP has been pretty much flat for decades, despite billions of dollars spent on the Ed Deform accountability agenda, and particularly on standardized testing that was supposed to result in vast score increases.
The NAEP is on a 500-point scale. These are declines of 1 percent and 1.4 percent respectively.
Let me repeat that: 1 percent and 1.4 percent.
The barest tick downward. After a pandemic that killed millions. “Bring our your dead and make sure to get plenty of sleep before the NAEP tomorrow!”
WTF are people so freaked out about? But that’s what happens in education, isn’t it? People freak out. A lot of manufactured sound and fury over nothing. Then they roll out the medicine show, with its miracle cures–VAM, more testing, more depersonalized learning, vouchers, charter schools, anything to generate $$$$$ for edupreneurs and to provide arguments for privatizing the commons.
Mental masturbation is so much fun!
Isn’t it astonishing, Duane, that none of these journalists writing these end-of-the-world articles about the NAEP scores, not one of them, bothered to ask himself or herself, well, how big a drop is five points?
Even IF the tests were valid indicators, a rise or drop of 1 percent would mean almost nothing. Heck, a given student taking different forms of the test on different days probably averages greater variation in his or her score. 1 percent. Give me a freaking break. OMG. I had 1 percent less coffee in my cup this morning!!!! I think I might have slept 1 percent less last night than I usually do!!!! What ever am I going to do!!!!! LMAO.
Even with legitimate measurements, there is always noise so change from one measurement to the next is not meaningful.
Even trends over the short term (just a few data points) are usually not meangful.
Only a trend over a longer period is.
And then, only if the data points themselves are meaningful measurements..
Everything else is just mathturbation.
This is precisely why climate scientists don’t pay attention to year to year changes in the global mean temperature (which goes up and down pretty much randomly but instead focus on the multidecade trend, which has been upward since the 70’s.
Even though any two points determine a line, only a fool would assume that just two points indicate a trend.
Thank you, Bob! Every press article on this subject lacks the needed context you provide here. I guess it only occurs to those of us who follow public ed subjects closely. Every single article I’ve read on the latest NAEP figs for 4th graders neglects to mention that NAEP scores have flattened since 2009, even dipped in some regions. Therefore they end up making ridiculous pronouncements about “not seen since __!, without even noticing they had to reach back that far to find even a miniscule dip, because scores have been flat for over a dozen years. Which is the actual news story that connects to longterm national ed policy. Not what predictably happened during pandemic.
The NAEP scores declined on average 1 percent in ELA and 1.4 percent in Math.
Oh my. Is this the last trump of doom?
1 percent. Barely a tick downward.
Oh my God, the sky is falling! The schools are failing! The teachers are molesting! The unions are protesting! Save us, o worshipful billionaires, save us!!!!
Haaaa!
This shows how we are totally brainwashed by the level B education that is controlled by the teach to the test mentality.
“A”level education which relates to the ability to research, analyze, conclude and defend their conclusion remains at a low level as it is rarely a part of the learning process.
The only solution is to demonstrate proficiencies and continuously move forward on a child’s pathway to success. As they succeed at one, they immediately move to another. If they “fail” they learn from that immediately and attack that proficiency when ready.
Failure becomes part of the learning process, no more defined as devastating retention and a step toward the school to prison pipeline.
“This shows how we* are totally brainwashed by the level B education that is controlled by the teach to the test mentality.”
Bingo, bango, boingo. . . We have a winner. Give that intelligent gentleman a Kewpie Doll.
*Although I would say most and not we, because there are some of us who do realize the damage caused by the standards and testing malpractice regime.
“Long-term trend data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 9-year-old students scored, on average, five points lower in reading and seven points lower in math in 2022 than did their pre-pandemic peers in 2020. The declines represent the largest drops in decades.”
That’s because the NAEP has been pretty much flat for decades, despite billions of dollars spent on the Ed Deform accountability agenda, and particularly on standardized testing that was supposed to result in vast score increases.
The NAEP is on a 500-point scale. The declines this year are of 1 percent in ELA and 1.4 percent in Math.
OMG! The sky is falling!!!! The end is upon us!!!
Not.
I knew the kids were not learning as much during the disruption of Covid. It was obvious from the number of days the kids were absent, the number of days their teachers spent out with Covid that they caught because they were around kids, the amount of time the kids spent with parents who lost their job due to Covid.
Scores dropped? Just like my jaw.
^^^
They probably just got out of practice with their test taking skills.