This week seemed to focus on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), particularly the release of reading and mathematics scores. A few months ago, I was appointed by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to fill one of the two chief state school officer positions on the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB). This board was established by Congress in 1988 to oversee the NAEP assessments and procedures. I am one of 26 members. The membership includes teachers, principals, business, parents, legislators and governors. The group meets quarterly to address the statutory requirements of the 1988 legislation. This group is different than most groups I serve on, because the group is a governing body and not solely an advisory body.
An interesting issue with which the NAGB is dealing is the participation rates of 12th graders. In order to make the 12th-grade assessment more meaningful to students, teachers and school districts, the NAGB is working on linking the 12th-grade results to college and career readiness. This will be very important to Kentucky and the nation as we move our accountability models toward college and career readiness.
Kentucky has seen significant progress in 4th- and 8th-grade NAEP results in reading and math. Kentucky also performs very well in science as compared to the nation. It is great to see Kentucky reading scores in 4th and 8th grades above the national average. Also, it is good to see 4th-grade math scores above the national average and 8th-grade math scores closing the gap to the national average, where we are now only one point below the national average. It is also good to see continued improvement as a nation in both reading and math.
There was certainly good news in the NAEP results; however, there is much work left to do as a nation and a state. My biggest concern for our nation and state is the achievement gaps based on poverty and race. In 4th-grade math for Kentucky, there is a 19-point gap for poverty and an 18-point gap for race. While both of those gaps are better than the national gaps, and we have closed the gaps since 2000, we must redouble our efforts for children in poverty. In 4th-grade reading, the Kentucky gaps are 20 points for poverty and 16 points for race. Again, we are better than the national gaps and have improved since 2000. The 8th-grade gaps tell a similar story.
Readers may want to refer to my October 21 blog for my thoughts on actions we are taking and need to take as individuals and collectively as a state to make progress on closing achievement gaps.
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Commissioner Holliday,
ReplyDeleteIt would be good if NAEP had shown notable progress on NAEP, but that isn't the case. NAEP is a sampled assessment and has statistical sampling errors in all the score estimates. According to the 2011 NAEP math and reading report cards, our latest scores in both subjects are not statistically different from those in 2009 for both fourth and eighth grade students.
Also, our exclusion rates for learning disabled students in both fourth and eighth grade NAEP reading led the nation. That, as you pointed out to the state board in October, puts those scores into question.
It is good that you are trying to get the state board to change our policy for testing learning disabled students to deal with Kentucky's unusually high exclusion on the NAEP. Hopefully, that change will occur soon, because right now our state doesn't look too good when people ask why we had to exclude a whopping 8 percent of all of our fourth graders under the learning disabled category while Mississippi only excluded 1 percent.
Richard Innes