SOME REACTION TO THIS YEAR'S LOW NAEP SCORES

I have read some responses to this year's release of National Assessment of Educational Progress scores. The NAEP is a national test given every two years with low stakes for the students who don't even see the results.We go as usual to Diane Ravitch for some guidance.

After a generation of disruptive reforms—No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, VAM and Common Core—after a decade or more of disinvestment in education, after years of bashing and demoralizing teachers, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for 2019 shows the results:

Over the past decade, there has been no progress in either mathematics or reading performance, and the lowest-performing students are doing worse,” said Peggy Carr, the associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP. “In fact, over the long term in reading, the lowest-performing students—those readers who struggle the most—have made no progress from the first NAEP administration almost 30 years ago.”

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos predictably used the results to call for more privatization of schools in the form of private school vouchers and charter schools. 

Ravitch answers back:

Addendum to DeVos remarks:

The lowest performing urban districts—Detroit and Milwaukee—have had school choice for 25 years.

How did New York City do on the NAEP?

From Chalkbeat:

The city’s scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP — given to a random sampling of fourth and eighth graders every two years in math and English — have essentially remained stagnant for the past several years, according to 2019 data released Wednesday. (One notable exception was a five-point drop in fourth-grade math scores from 2013, when de Blasio was elected.)

New York City scores on 2019’s tests were below the national average as well as the state average. The city’s scores were roughly in the middle of the pack of the 27 urban districts that participate in a city-level comparison.

New York City was not unique in posting flat scores. In fact, national scores have essentially remained flat for a decade, the data show.

My favorite reaction is from Louisiana where former Deputy NYC Chancellor John White, who twice came to Jamaica High School to push for closing our school, who is now the State Education Commissioner in Louisiana. White is the ed deformer's deformer. 

Here is a little of Mercedes Schneider's analysis of the latest fall in NAEP and ACT scores in Louisiana:

After seven years of John White as Louisiana’s state superintendent, the results were so unsavory to White and his Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) that his Louisiana 2019 NAEP Results Summary does not include a single actual NAEP scaled score.

Mercedes then shows the numbers to prove that there is no great Louisiana miracle and then she cites falling ACT scores to hammer home the point. Her conclusion:

John White and LDOE have no control over the reporting of NAEP scores and state-level ACT results– which means that these test scores are not susceptible to LDOE manipulation, and the results cannot be concealed from public view.

Therefore, NAEP and state-level ACT results provide the most objective measure of the test-score-centered ed reformers themselves– reformers like John White.

He is the head reformer in charge; for his reformer-success image, it all comes down to the test scores.

Louisiana’s 2019 NAEP and ACT results are a highly-visible, undeniable John White failure, and he knows it.

Sometimes I must admit I am a little disappointed that cooler heads prevailed so my friend did not take Mr. White out to the parking lot at Jamaica High School to settle our differences as he threatened to do him directly back in 2010. Just kidding, I'm against violence.