The ledes on yesterday’s NAEP numbers in papers across the country this morning:
“The basic math and reading skills of USA students have slowly, surely improved over the past 30 to 40 years, new findings show, with sharp increases among many of the nation’s lowest-performing students – especially in the past four years” – USA Today
“U.S. high-school students haven’t achieved any significant gains in reading or math for nearly four decades” - Wall Street Journal
“Math and reading scores for 9- and 13-year-olds have risen since the 2002 enactment of No Child Left Behind, providing fuel to those who want to renew the federal law and strengthen its reach in high schools” — Washington Post
“The achievement gap between white and minority students has not narrowed in recent years, despite the focus of the No Child Left Behind law on improving the scores of blacks and Hispanics” — New York Times
The nation’s 9- and 13-year-olds are doing better in math and reading than they did decades ago, test results released Tuesday show” — Atlanta Journal Constitution
“American 17-year-olds aren’t performing any better in reading and math than their bell-bottom-clad counterparts in the early 1970s” — Christian Science Monitor
According to the Center on Education Policy, 23 states engaged in some form of “backloading” their NCLB proficiency targets–requiring small gains in the first few years of implementation, with more aggressive goals later on. Later on has arrived, notes Thompson Publishing’s Andrew Brownstein.
Some educators rolled the dice and hoped for relief from a new president or, at the very least, a reauthorization that would eliminate some of the law’s more onerous mandates. Others, like Delaware education secretary Valerie Woodruff, merely wanted to give their school districts time to adjust their curriculum and instruction to get in sync with the law. “We knew this might happen, but we were also hoping there’d be some adjustments and a little more reality along the way,” said. “It’s like avoiding going to the dentist. There’s always part of you that hopes the problem will go away.”
Reauthorization is not on the agenda at present, and the new president will have his hands full with the econony and two wars. Comparisons to the financial crisis are inevitable. “Just like over-optimistic homebuyers, states chose to defer payment until later, hoping that some miracle would bail them out before the bill came due,” Brownstein notes.
At a recent meeting at the U.S. Department of Education (ED), Scott Marion, vice president of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, warned, “The Fannie Mae of NCLB is about to hit.”
Bailout? What bailout?
It’s been easy to shrug one’s shoulders and say that schools in trouble under NCLB deserve to be in trouble. But when schools in well-regarded districts like Arlington, Virginia’s start finding themsleves in trouble, eyebrows will surely be raised. The Washington Post reports the Hoffman-Boston Elementary School, where black students missed benchmarks this year, has become the first school in Northern Virginia forced to restructure because of lagging tests scores.
What’s challenging is they are under a microscope, but they aren’t terribly different than other schools,” Mark Johnston, assistant superintendent of instruction in Arlington, said of the small school near the Pentagon. “I think there are reasons why schools don’t make targets, and it’s easy when those reasons are clear and evident. It’s not easy when they’re not.”
Expect to see more schools in unexpected places run into trouble. “It’s not just going to be a problem of the inner city. It’s going to be a problem of many school districts,” Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, tells the Post. “This will come as a surprise to a number of school officials and to the public.”
Students from poor families in the Washington, DC area have made major gains on reading and math tests and are starting to catch up with those from middle-class and affluent backgrounds, a Washington Post analysis shows.
In Montgomery County, for instance, students in poverty have earned better scores on Maryland’s reading test in each of the past five years, slicing in half the 28 percentage-point gulf that separated their pass rate from the county average. They also have made a major dent in the math gap. In Fairfax County, another suburban academic powerhouse, such students have slashed the achievement gaps on Virginia tests.
In the DC proper, reading and math scores have risen since 2006, but fewer that half passed last Spring’s tests. “The results show substantial progress in the Washington area toward the law’s core goal: raising performance of disadvantaged children,” the paper reports. “Although concerns persist about the law’s emphasis on standardized tests, many educators say it has forced schools to concentrate more systematically on each struggling student.”
Michael Goldstein, the founder of Match Charter Public School in Boston weighs in with the last word on the Louisiana rerouting scandal:
In other news, the Red Sox reported today that they were re-routing 3 victories from the Dodgers back to Boston. “Those Dodger wins were generated by Manny Ramirez,” said team president Larry Lucchino. “If Mannywood hadn’t demanded a trade from Boston, those wins would have been ours.” This development belatedly makes Boston the AL East Division Winner.
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