Peter Greene wants to save time for all organizations that react to the latest NAEP scores. His press release works whether scores are up, down, or flat.
He writes:
It’s time once again to greet the release of another set of data from the NAEP testing machine, which means everyone is warming up their Hot Take generator. But if, like me, you’re getting tired of writing a response to the latest NAEPery, here’s a handy news release that will let you mad lib your way to NAEPy wisdom.
The new scores from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), known as The Nation’s Report Card, have been released, providing important data about [insert your preferred education policy area]. The recent crisis in [select your favorite policy-adjacent crisis] has clearly created a burgeoning issue of [select whatever Bad Thing you feel will most scare your audience in the direction of your preferred policy].
Says [head of your organization], “The new scores provide important evidence that now is the time for [insert whatever policy action your group always supports]. Clearly the [rise/drop/stagnation] in scores among [whichever subgroup cherry picking best suits your point] proves exactly what we have been arguing for [however long you’ve been at this.]”
[Insert paragraph of data carefully selected and crunched for your purposes. Add a graph if you like. People really dig graphs.]
“This is a clear indication,” says [your favorite go-to education expert], “that it is long past time to [do that thing your organization has been trying to get people to do for years]. Clearly [our preferred solution] is needed.” [Insert further sales pitch here as needed.]
You can expand on this if you wish, but make sure that you definitely do not–
* provide context for the data that you include
* offer perspective from NAEP’s many critics
* absolutely never ever reference the fact that the NAEP folks are extraordinarily clear that folks should not try to suggest a causal relationship between scores and anything else.
As always, the main lesson of NAEP is that contrary to the expectations of so many policy wonks, cold hard data does not actually solve a thing.
The NAEP remains a data-rich Rorschach test that tells us far more about the people interpreting the data than it does about the people from whom the data was collected. Button up your overcoat, prepare for greater-than-usual pearl-clutching and solution-pitching from all the folks who still think the pandemic shutdown is a great opportunity to do [whatever it is they have already been trying to do].
What did NAEP make possible that
you couldn’t do before NAEP, and
what would you have to stop doing
tomorrow if NAEP went away?
It made it possible for people who call themselves journalists and paid toadies of a few Ed Deformer Oligarchs to write breathless articles about the coming educational Armageddon based on a 1 percent drop in scores.
The Magic NAEP Ball would be a more apt graphic.
Politician: Magic NAEP Ball, are American school children getting dumber?
Magic NAEP Ball: It is certain.
Politician: Magic NAEP Ball, is there anything that we can do about it?
Magic NAEP Ball: Very doubtful.
Democratic politician:Magic NAEP Ball, will Trump be indicted?
Magic NAEP Ball: Don’t count on it.
The cherry on the journalistic cup cake related to recent NAEP reporting was an interview by Stephanie Ruhle on her 11:00 pm MSNBC program where she rushed in, of all people, ARNE DUNCAN, to discuss the CRISIS OF THE DROPPING NAEP SCORES. Her URGENCY in her set-up and interview was almost reported as a 3 alarm fire. Poor Arne. He actually tried to calm her reactions. But her hysteria is typical related to student test scores.
Nuts!
It’s obvious to real educators that a pandemic, million COVID deaths, ZOOM schooling, kids alone at home, banning books, masking, vaccing…anti vaccing, limited computer/Internet access, Jan6, school shootings, politics, chaos everywhere….shall we go on?
On top of this craziness, when children are finally returning to school, we TEST. We test & react in horror that children didn’t know the grade level content or skills. Scores dropped….who knew? Who could have predicted that?
ACTUALLY…….Anybody with some sense!
Children living in war, migration, fleeing, homeless, famine, rising fascism, massive crime, poverty, lead poisoning, hunger, job losses, craziness, etc…..are then tested under the WORST CONDITIONS.
Meanwhile, journalists hold up those results as if our children were living under heat lamps in incubators to be educated under the best conditions.
Stop the testing madness, end poverty, stop the political madness, allow families to raise their children with proper wages, fund schools, stop destroying public schools & use the election spending zillion$ on real people for a healthy nation.
My 2¢ worth!
Bravo!
Dear HH,
You are too sensible.
When I heard that Stephanie Ruhle was bringing in Arne Duncan as her “expert,” I decided to skip the show. Life is too short to waste an hour…I still remember when some international scores were reported during Arne’s time, abd the US ranked in the middle, as it usually does. Arne said it was “a Sputnik moment.”
Arne Dumbkin has a Spudnik* moment every time he opens his mouth.
*aka Mr. Potatohead
SDP, this is wonderful! A spudnik moment. Indeed!
Diane, You’re right – I’ll definitely turn the station the next time. My time is getting way too short & Arne still plays an Edu ‘expert’ on TV.
Pulling the plug on Arne!
Actually, I do remember the “Real Sputnik moment”
65 yrs ago.
Thx, Hanna
Hanna, me too.
I’m surprised that the Destroy Public Education Crime Syndicate doesn’t use the charts for crime in the US since the 1960s and just change the name and what the lines mean.
Crime today is dramatically lower than it was back in the 1960s and 1970s, but to hear the news and MAGA RINOS running around shooting at anyone they think is a crook with their AR15s, it sounds like everyone is robbing or killing everyone else and it isn’t safe to open the door to get your mail.
On second thought, that might be true if someone knocks on our door, we peek without them seeing us peeking, and discover someone with a MAGA hat on and an AR15 held in both hands with an angry hate filled expression standing on our porch and they look like Greene or Boebert.
The NAEP chart isn’t as dramatic as the real one for crime rates, but NAEP scores from 1973 are still higher than 1973. They fluctuate by very small margins but nothing ever dramatic unless you are a member of the Destroy Public Education Crime Syndicate cherry picking facts and twisting reality.
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/?age=9
I suspect that the members of the Destroy Public Education Crime Syndicate are the same people spreading fear about the danger of crime, making both sound terrifying when in fact, we are safer from criminals today than we were in the 1960s and 1970s, except from the members of the Destroy Public Education Crime Syndicate (they are coming for our money, our property, our medical care, our Social Security, our unemployment benefits, our minimum wages, our freedom to vote without fear, et al.)
“America’s Faulty Perception of Crime Rates – America’s crime rates are at their lowest point in decades. So why do so many Americans think crime is going up?”
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/americas-faulty-perception-crime-rates
And every election cycle, the Nazi Party, whooops, the MAGA RINO Party, whooops, got to get it correct this time, the Republican Party makes it sound like NAEP test scores and crime rates are so horrible it’s the end of the world.
Lloyd…..remember,
“American Carnage” is the name of the Republican tinted transition
sun glasses.
Haaaa! Well put!
I like where you’re going with this, Peter. I loved playing MadLibs on the school bus as a kid. Oh, the booger and gas jokes of 4th grade! Let me give this one a go. Sorry about all the boldface, folks, but it’s a MadLib:
The new scores from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), known as The Nation’s Report Card, have been released, providing important data about the bias of data and the people who use them. The recent crisis in data bias being used to make faulty predictive algorithms and theories has clearly created a burgeoning issue of perpetuating and escalating the historical prejudices and discrimination upon which are built all data.
Says someone who is not named Bill and never hung out with Jeffrey Epstein, “The new scores provide important evidence that now is the time for ending prejudicial standardized testing malpractice. Clearly the discovery of historical biases in data influencing scores and analyses to cause meaningless, random data to be interpreted as a problem among whichever subgroup best suits your point and cause over-policing, housing discrimination, and overburdening of public school students and teachers proves exactly what we have been arguing since we found out it was already happening behind closed doors or in a black box”
“This is a clear indication,” says someone who did not start a tech company that looked the other way on hiring and pay discrimination of women “that it is long past time to stop worshipping false data. Clearly equality in funding to promote lower class sizes and compensate teachers is needed.” Clearly, big companies are ad libbing about the most recent scores. And since most tech billionaires are completely mad, their foundations are Mad Libbing what will be done about it. They must be stopped.
“Hanging out” with Epstein is code for something.
Can’t put my finger on it.
But I’m sure I’ll think of it eventually.
Maybe don’t specifically mention putting fingers anywhere at this particular juncture of our stately colloquy.
SomeDAM, LeftCoast, hilarious!
OMG, LEFTCOAST. Beautiful!!!!
And don’t forget to blame unions for trying to keep schools safe. Was it safe to reopen in 2020? Emily Oester puts on her tinfoil medical cap and says yes. You might be thinking, LCT, it’s midday in California. Shouldn’t you be teaching? Funny story, earlier this week, one third of my students were out sick and I started getting a headache. So, I took a test. Now, I’m home quarantined with a covid fever. If this happened before the milder variants…If this happened before the vaccines…
Get better, friend. I got that stuff (from classrooms of students) back when it was Alpha. You need to be upright as much as possible, keep that stuff out of the lungs.
!!!!! Get better soon, LCT!!!
You would be in the hospital.
Thank you all. Almost there.
Hope you get better soon and don’t have any lingering effects.
Thank you, Roy and SDP. I’ll be well. I’m keeping up and upright, and I’m past the scariest worst of it and back in teacher-good spirits. I’ve had a few vaccine shots; just lagged a bit too long getting the latest booster and got a little too used to life without masks. I’m still partially vaccinated at this point. Besides, after surviving Broadie John Deasy as the superintendent of my district while Michelle Rhee was cavorting around on her broom, covid is nothing. That’s a half joke.
Of course there are going to be lingering effects when people’s bodies are put under such stresses, and again I’m only partly morbidly joking, but in the end, spending my days in classrooms full of students is well worth the long term damage to my vital organs wrought by pandemic viruses and Pearson.
Hilarious, Peter! Well done! I particularly love “Hot Take Generator.”