No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
Much ado has been made about setting high standards over past year. In his first major address on education policy, given just two months after he took oath of office, President Barack Obama put issue on national agenda. They ought stop for our kids, he said, adding that the solution to low test scores is not lowering standards--it's tougher, clearer In March 2010, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan accused educators of having lowered so they could meet requirements set by federal education law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which requires that all students be in reading and math by year 2014. Current conversations about creating a common national largely focus on substantive curriculum to be taught at various grade levels. Even more important, we submit, is each state's for student performance with respect to curriculum, as expressed through its proficiency standard. Curricula can be perfectly designed, but if proficiency bar is set very low, little is accomplished by setting content standards in first place. To see whether states are setting proficiency bars in such a way that they are lowballing expectations and have lowered for students in 4th- and 8th-grade reading and math, Education Next has used information from recently released 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to evaluate empirically proficiency standards each state has established. This report is fourth in a series in which we periodically assess rigor of these standards (see Johnny Can Read ... in Some States, features, Summer 2005; Keeping an Eye on State features, Summer 2006; and Few Stales Set World-Class check facts, Summer 2008). The 2009 NAEP tests in reading and math were given to a representative sample of students in 4th and 8th grade in each state. NAEP, called the nation's report card, is managed by Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics and is currently gold standard of assessments. Its proficiency is roughly equivalent to international established by those industrialized nations that are members of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). If a state identifies no higher a percentage of students as being on its own tests than NAEP does, then state can be said to have set its standards at a world-class level. To ascertain objectively whether state standards are high or low, and whether they are rising or falling, we compare percentage of students deemed by each state with percentage as measured by NAEP. The state assessment data used in this report consist of those compiled in 2009 by 50 states and District of Columbia. States have strong incentives not to set world-class standards. If they do, more of their schools will be identified as failing under NCLB rules, and states will then be required to take corrective actions to bring students' performance up to higher standard. As a result, temptation for states to lowball expectations is substantial. Perhaps for this reason, a sharp disparity between NAEP standards and standards in most states has been identified in all of our previous reports. In 2009, situation improved in reading, but deteriorated further in math. Every state, for both reading and math (with exception of Massachusetts for math), deems more students proficient on its own assessments than NAEP does. The average difference is a startling 37 percentage points. In Figure 1, we provide a uniform ranking of rigor of state standards using same A to F scale used to grade students (see sidebar for specifics on methodology we used). Strength of State Proficiency Standards, 2009 (Figure 1) 4th Grade 8th Grade Math Reading Math Reading Massachusetts A A A A Missouri A A A A Washington A A B+ A Hawaii B+ A B A New Mexico B+ A B A New Hampshire B A B- A Vermont B A B- A Minnesota B- A C+ B+ Maine B- A C+ B+ Montana B- A C+ B+ New Jersey B- A C+ B Rhode Island B- A C+ B Colorado C+ B+ C+ B Utah C B- C+ Nevada C B- C C+ Indiana C B- C C+ District of Columbia C B- C C+ West Virginia C B- C C+ Ohio C B- C C+ Oklahoma C C+ C- C Kentucky C C+ C- C Florida C C+ C- C Wyoming C C+ C- C Mississippi C C+ C- C California C C+ C- C Wisconsin C C+ C- C Alaska C C+ C- C South Dakota C C+ C- C Pennsylvania C C+ C- C North Dakota C- C+ C- C North Carolina C- C D+ C Connecticut C- C D+ C Iowa C- C D+ C Oregon C- C D+ C Kansas C- C D+ C Delaware C- C D+ C Georgia D+ C D+ C Arkansas D+ C D C- Louisiana D+ C D C- South Carolina D+ C D C- Virginia D+ C D C- Idaho D C- D C- Maryland D C- D D+ Arizona D C- D D+ New York D C- D- D+ Texas D C- D- D+ Illinois D D+ D- D+ Michigan F D F D Alabama F D F D- Nebraska F D- F F Tennessee F F F F Overall Average Percentage Change in Ranking 2003 2005 2007 2009 2003 to 2009 Massachusetts A A A A +8. …
Loading…
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.