The math and reading test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Long Term Trends, has been given to a representative national sample of 9-, 13- and 17-year-old students every few years since the early 1970's, virtually without modification, and social scientists study it carefully. The results announced today were from a test given to 28,000 public and private school students in all 50 states during fall 2003 and spring 2004. The test had not been administered since 1999.
Nine year old students born in the mid-1990's, on average, earned the highest scores in three decades, in both subjects.
In the reading test, the average score of 9-year-old black students increased by 14 points on a 500-point scale, to 200 in 2004 from 186 in 1999. Reading scores of 9-year-old white students increased by 5 points, to 226 in 2004 from 221 in 1999. As a result, the black-white achievement gap for 9-year-old students narrowed to 26 points from 35 points over those five years. In 1971, the gap was 44 points.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings attributed the gains among elementary students to President Bush's school reform law, No Child Left Behind. Sounding jubilant, she also credited the nation's teachers, principals and state and national policymakers, including Democrats who have supported the federal law.
Despite Spellings' efforts at sharing the credit, I expect to hear lots of people going out of their way to discredit No Child Left Behind.
Posts
13 comments:
It would be nice to know how the scores had changed prior to 1999. My guess is that they've gone up every year since they started. My question is ... Did they go up at a higher pace this time, then previous tests?
I would like to think that future generations are always smarter than past generations. I'm sure our teachers and ways of teaching have a lot to do with that.
I'm not discrediting "No Child Left Behind" but I'm also not going to jump on the bandwagon and get up cheer over it.
Maybe the numbers would be even higher if they program had been funded as it was supposed to be funded. Just think where our students would be with an extract $200 billion [that was spent needlessly somewhere else].
James: the key point is that the GAP between black and white students is closing very significantly, and it's happening for the younger but not the older students. This suggests something new is happening.
Key factors in education:
1. The most important learning occurs by 4th grade. If a kid can't read well by then, it is very, very difficult to get him on track. Work on the young kids, get results. Work on the older kids... well, good luck.
2. Before NCLB, schools could just result aggregate scores. Typically, districts with large minority populations bused the students around to break up minority concentrations, and to try to defeat "poverty pocket" effects. Test results would be released and would show 80% of students at grade level -nifty, huh? NCLB forced disaggregation of the data, and drove the school districts to be accountable. What was discovered, is that most of the kids flunking in many districts were Black or Hispanic. Instead of having one majority-minority school with a high failure rate, the districts were breaking up the poor students between otherwise decent schools, to hide the scale of their failure. They can't do that any more, without generating outrage among all the parents.
3. The Administration has cracked down on "MinSped" (minorities in special education) problems, mainly the "overclassification" of minority students into special ed classes. Typically, a teacher evaluates a second or third grader, and determines whether they will make it or not. Black and Hispanic children in many districts are written off and pushed into slow moving special ed classes all to easily. By forcing schools to make special ed classifications by more rigorous, hard-to-meet standards, it encourages the schools to make extra efforts to ensure the children really are write-offs. There is also a self-fulfilling prophecy effect attendant to the greater teaching efforts. When teachers are quick to write off a kid, the kid does worse; when the teachers hope and expect a kid to do well, the kid tends to do better.
4. The Administration's efforts to develop race-neutral methods of college admissions have stressed "pipeline" development, a la California, with the public universities taking an active role in improve education for minority kids in "the pipeline" of elementary, middle and high schools. Enrichment materials have been developed, more AP courses are offered, and internships are more extensive. Additionally, with a greater push on academic achievment, expectations are higher - again taking advantage of the self-fulfilling prophecy effect.
Some of the improvement started in the late 90s, but the performance gap was stubborn and unmoving until 2002. It has started to shrink rapidly since then. The statistical materials examining this are available through the Department of Education, which tracks the performance of all schools on standardized tests.
And let's be clear about the math: it took 28 years to cut the gap by 20% (from 1971 to 1999 the gap is cut from 44 to 35) and but in the 5 years thereafter the gap was cut by an additional 26% (from 1999 to 2004 the gap is cut from 35 to 26). That's pretty impressive! And I would think that as a big gap narrows, it becomes harder, not easier to close it by new increments.
Ann,
This is great news! I'm not sure that I agree with your comment about the difficulty of closing this kind of a gap, though. That's true in many areas (a .300 hitter can't improve 20% every year), but here the issue is bringing under-performing students up to a standard that has been shown to be acheivable. That kind of gap has lots of causes, but there is no inherent reason why minority students can't perform on a par with whites.
John: Very interesting. The 1971 to 75 change is amazing and must have made people think the problem was close to being solved. How diappointing to see the plateau after that. You've got a 35 point gap basically sitting there all that time. Hard to know what it means. I guess I am an optimist. I see an improvement and know something very different was done and want to believe we are on our way to a better future. But people in 1975 must have thought the same. You're right that we don't really know very much until we see the next set of scores.
The biggest problem I have is that most achievement tests (by their nature) don't test much more than rote memorization and "spit back." Months of time in many schools are now spent on "achievement test preparation" when they could be spent on teaching something better (and ultimately more useful in the outside world). These test scores don't test a whole lot more than how good a test-taker the students have become.
Matt: I don't understand how your comment relates to reading comprehension and math tests, the subject of this article.
Ann,
There is reason to be encouraged. There has been statistically significant improvement in both gap reduction and average black reading scores since 1975. At the same time the gap has closed, the baselines have increased. This is good news.
Equine law? I knew things were getting bad, but this? Where will it end?
I heard this great news in a press release from the NEA and the AFT. They have also determined their stark-raving moonbat criticism of NCLB was wrong and they apologize.
On a serious note, I agree with John there may be no or little causation. I believe a good strong economy works wonders in terms of reducing crime and improving the quality of almost everyone's life.
One of the "models" for these testing programs is the TAAS/TEAMS testing program in Texas. Even in my "advanced/honors" High School classes, we were forced to spend a week on "learning about the test." Everything revolved around the standardized test for WEEKS ON END. I think the intent is good, but it changes the focus of learning in the wrong direction from learning for its own sake (as an inherent good) to learning for THE TEST.
I'll also note that these sorts of tests frequently discourage creative thinking and use of outside information. For instance, I scored only "adequate" rather than "exemplary" on my "exit writing" test because I didn't feel the formulaic "essay template" suited what they asked us to do. (It was a "on the one hand, on the other hand" sort of thing that they wanted--only taking a position at the end, whereas I prefer to state my position up front.)
What this data tells us is "our children have gotten better at taking reading and math standardized tests." That may (but does not necessarily) mean that our children have gotten better at reading and math.
That's one of many reasons that my law school grades weren't as high as I would have liked, and why I fretted about the bar exam. I HATE writing to a formula of any sort. I prefer putting clarity and directness above formula. Sometimes a formula achieves that. Other times, not so much.
Post a Comment