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Every two years, the release of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) generates a wave of research and commentary trying to explain short- and long-term trends. For instance, there have been a bunch of recent attempts to "explain" an increase in aggregate NAEP scores during the late 1990s and 2000s. Some analyses postulate that the accountability provisions of NCLB were responsible, while more recent arguments have focused on the "effect" (or lack thereof) of newer market-based reforms - for example, looking to NAEP data to "prove" or "disprove" the idea that changes in teacher personnel and other policies have (or have not) generated "gains" in student test scores. The basic idea here is that, for every increase or decrease in cross-sectional NAEP scores over a given period of time (both for all students and especially for subgroups such as minority and low-income students), there must be "something" in our education system that explains it. In many (but not all) cases, these discussions consist of little more than speculation.

"Yesterday, Matt Di Carlo over at Shankerblog put out his April fools post. The genius of the post is in its subtlety.  Matt put together a few graphs of longitudinal NAEP data showing that Maryland had made greater than average national gains on NAEP and then asserted that these gains must therefore be a function of some policy conditions that exist in Maryland. In the Post-RTTT era, Maryland has been the scorn of "reformers" because it just won't get on board with large scale vouchers and charter expansion and has resisted follow through on test-score based teacher evaluation. Taking a poke a reformy logic, Matt asserted that perhaps the low charter share and lack of emphasis on test score based teacher evaluation… along with a dose of decent funding might be the cause of Maryland's miracle! Of course, these assertions are no more a stretch than commonly touted miracles in Texas in the 1990s, Florida or Washington DC, most of which are derived from making loose connections between NAEP trend data and selective discussion of preferred policies that may have concurrently existed.  The difference is that Matt was poking fun at the idea of making bold, decisive, causal inferences from such data. Such data raise interesting questions. What I found so fun and at the same time deeply disturbing about Matt's post is that the assertions he made in satire… were nowhere near as absurd as many of the assertions made in studies/reports, etc. I discussed here on my blog over the years. Here are but a few examples of "stuff" presented as serious/legit policy evidence, that make Matt's satirical assertions seem completely reasonable."

For this podcast, we spoke with Jack Buckley, commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics, the center which administers the NAEP test. He took Early Ed Watch on a tour of the data from the most recent NAEP scores. Among the highlights is a trend that Buckley says suggests that students who are both at the top and bottom of their grade level may be improving-a finding contrary to the notion that No Child Left Behind has led teachers to focus on low-performing students at the expense of high-performing ones.

he results are now public from the 2011 federal testing program known as NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. And once again, schools on the nation's military bases have outperformed public schools on both reading and math tests for fourth and eighth graders.

The media react with alarm every time the NAEP scores appear because only about one-third or so of students is rated "proficient." This is supposed to be something akin to a national tragedy because presumably almost every child should be "proficient." Remember, under No Child Left Behind, ALL students are supposed to be proficient in reading and math by the year 2014. Since I served on NAGB for seven years, I can explain what the board's "achievement levels" mean. There are four levels. At the top is "advanced." Then comes "proficient." Then "basic." And last, "below basic."

"Yesterday gave us the release of the 2013 NAEP results, which of course brings with it a bunch of ridiculous attempts to cast those results as supporting the reform-du-jour. Most specifically yesterday, the big media buzz was around the gains from 2011 to 2013 which were argued to show that Tennessee and Washington DC are huge outliers - modern miracles - and that because these two settings have placed significant emphasis on teacher evaluation policy - that current trends in teacher evaluation policy are working - that tougher evaluations are the answer to improving student outcomes - not money… not class size… none of that other stuff."

"Pundits love to make cross-state comparisons and rank states on a variety of indicators (I'm guilty too). A favorite activity is comparing NAEP test scores across subjects, including comparing which states have the biggest test score gaps between children who qualify for subsidized lunch and children who don't. The simple conclusion - States with big gaps are bad - inequitable - and states with smaller gaps must being doing something right! It is generally assumed by those who report these gaps and rank states on achievement gaps that these gaps are appropriately measured - comparably measured - across states. That a low-income child in one state is similar to a low-income child in another. That the average low-income child or the average of low-income children in one state is comparable to the average of low-income children in another, and that the average of non-low income children in one state is comparable to the average of non-low income children in another. LITTLE COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH."

As I predicted, there was no miracle in DC under Michelle Rhee's reign. At least not one you can see on the NAEP scores for fourth or eighth grade students in reading and math.

Imagine you're a parent of a seven-year-old who has just come home from school with her end-of-year report card. And the report card provides marks for only two subjects, and for children who are in grade-levels different from hers. Furthermore, there's nothing on the report card to indicate how well these children have been progressing throughout the year. There are no teacher comments, like "great participation in class" or "needs to turn in homework on time." And to top it off, the report gives a far harsher assessment of academic performance than reports you've gotten from other sources. That's just the sort of "report card" that was handed to America yesterday in the form of the National Assessment of Education Progress. And while the NAEP is all well and good for what it is -- a biennial norm-referenced, diagnostic assessment of fourth and eighth graders in math and reading -- the results of the NAEP invariably get distorted into all kinds of completely unfounded "conclusions" about the state of America's public education system.

Class Size Matters has done a detailed analysis of the trend in student achievement in NYC since 2003, when Mayor Bloomberg's educational policies were first implemented, as measured by the NAEPs - the national assessment carried out every two years by the federal government in 4th and 8th grade English and math.  

Tomorrow, the education world will get the results of the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as the "nation's report card." The findings - reading and math scores among a representative sample of fourth and eighth graders - will drive at least part of the debate for the next two years, when the next round comes out. I'm going to make a prediction, one that is definitely a generalization, but is hardly uncommon in policy debates: People on all "sides" will interpret the results favorably no matter how they turn out.

"Beverley Holden Johns, a nationally recognized expert in the field of disabilities, strongly disagrees with Arne Duncan. Duncan wants children with disabilities to be able to perform on the highest level of NAEP tests. She points out that NAEP was not designed for this purpose. Duncan unilaterally changed the requirements of the IDEA act, without Congressional authorization. Having changed NCLB without Congressional authorization, he must think that ignoring the law is routine. In Néw York, we learned how students with disabilities do when they took the Common Core test: 95% failed."

Despite all the money and effort devoted to developing the Common Core State Standards-not to mention the simmering controversy over their adoption in several states-the study foresees little to no impact on student learning. That conclusion is based on analyzing states' past experience with standards and examining several years of scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

he only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from this week's release by the National Assessment of Educational Progress: Reading and math achievement by New York City's students is dismal.

In my post earlier today about NAEP test score trends, I said I was pessimistic about recent educational reforms because big gains among 9-year-olds mostly seem to wash away by the time students graduate from high school. However, several commenters complained that this was unfair: high school students in 2008 had spent only a few years in the post-NCLB "reform" environment. What we really want to look at are cohort effects. How do kids who have spent their entire lives in the new environment do?

"Here is the reason for the collapse of test scores in New York City and New York State. State officials decided that New York test scores should be aligned with the achievement levels of the federally-administered National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)."

A study released by Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance and Education Next yesterday compares U.S. students who performed at or above the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (generally dubbed the "Nation's Report Card") in math to the 15-year-olds tested through the Program for International Student Assessment, administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Researchers developed a crosswalk study of a sample of the graduating class of 2011, which participated in the 2007 NAEP as 8th graders and in the 2009 PISA as 15-year-olds.

This is a compilation of previous posts, in response to the egregious abuse of data presented on Page 3, here: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/64717249

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect of this federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question. This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student achievement based on an analysis of state-level panel data on student test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The impact of NCLB is identified using a comparative interrupted time series analysis that relies on comparisons of the test-score changes across states that already had school accountability policies in place prior to NCLB and those that did not. Our results indicate that NCLB generated statistically significant increases in the average math performance of fourth graders (effect size 5 0.23 by 2007) as well as improvements at the lower and top percentiles. There is also evidence of improvements in eighth-grade math achievement, particularly among traditionally low-achieving groups and at the lower percentiles. However, we find no evidence that NCLB increased fourth-grade reading achievement.