Credit: iStockphoto.com

Credit: iStockphoto.com

Against the properties of  enthusiasm regarding new reforms underway in California, from the Common Core to the Local Command Funding Formula, the just-released scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, brought a brush with reality.

Mirroring national results, scores in California on 4th-grade math dipped by 2 points and in 8th-course math by 1 point compared with 2013, the last time the NAEP (pronounced nape) was administered.  In reading, scores were flat in 4th-class  but dropped by three points in 8th-class.

California continued to rank nearly the bottom compared with other states. In 4th-grade reading information technology ranked 49th, and  ranked 43d in 8th-class reading. In math, the land ranked most the bottom also.

Media outlets published the scores with the usual depressing headlines.

"California'southward decade of gains on this examination but concluded," read one Los Angeles Times story.

"California exam scores in the cellar," read another in the San Jose Mercury News.

But what exactly exercise these scores tell us? It turns out that much depends on which scores one chooses to focus on, what time frame one looks at, and whether i looks at growth in scores rather than at scores at fixed points in fourth dimension.

Those who don't analyze tests for a living are likely to be confused.

For instance, Terry Mazany, the chair of the National Cess Governing Lath, said that despite the dip in scores this yr, scores are far higher than when the test was first administered in 1990. Mazany said the "big story" of this twelvemonth's tests was the narrowing of the test-score gap betwixt large urban school districts and the rest of the nation.

Former California Country Superintendent of Public Education Bill Honig said that the state is "even so among the fastest-growing states since 2009 in 8th-class scores." California as well leads the nation, along with Washington, D.C., in 8th-grade growth in reading scores, Honig said. Those scores have gone up by half dozen points since 2009, compared with a national growth of  1 point. California, Honig added, is also among the four highest states in its growth in 8th-grade math scores.

Optimist reformers who promoted  the Common Cadre standards could reasonably have hoped that gradual implementation of the new standards in California classrooms, and those in most other states in recent years, might accept nudged NAEP scores upwards even slightly.

That is especially the case in light of a report issued concluding week by the NAEP Validity Studies Panel  indicating that in that location is a "reasonable overlap" between  the NAEP and what the Common Core expects of students, at least on math.

Only considering the Common Core standards are designed to progress cumulatively from grade to grade, it will take several years earlier students will experience their full touch on.  The gains should exist greatest for those children who brainstorm in kindergarten and take the do good of pedagogy that builds on the standards on each of the preceding grades.

So should the fact that NAEP scores did not ascension be a cause for concern?

Here, too, the advice was to keep anxiety levels in check. Mazany and others cautioned against placing too much emphasis on one year's scores equally a signal of a  downward trend.

"As a state, we take fabricated progress over fourth dimension," Mazany said. "Information technology is probable that there will be some ups and downs."

"We don't know yet if these changes … are long-term," said Peggy Carr, interim commissioner of the National Center for Pedagogy Statistics, which administers the NAEP.

However, Chris Minnich, executive managing director of the Quango of Chief Country Schools Officers, which represents land teaching heads in all 50 states, emphasized the lack of progress. This year's scores, he said, "ostend that we accept a long style to get with our kids across the country."

At the same time, he said, tests are "an important data signal," but that there are "other data points that are likewise of import," such as graduation rates.

President Obama made a similar warning on a video he posted on Facebook cautioning against the overuse of tests, and saying they should non exist the only measure of a pupil'due south or a school's progress. "Tests should exist just one source of information, used alongside classroom work, surveys and other factors to give us an all-around look at how our students and schools are doing," he said.

The scores on the subset of big-city schoolhouse districts, including three in California (Los Angeles Unified, San Diego and Fresno) besides provided a "drinking glass one-half-full/half-empty" assay. In Los Angeles Unified, for instance, reading scores were apartment, and math scores showed a slight turn down. The district'south overall test scores put it in the bottom third of 21 big districts nationwide whose scores were reported separately.

Yet, as the Los Angeles Times reported, scores in 8th grade reading for depression income students in the district have risen more in any other district in the sample since 2003 — some 16 points.  In quaternary grade reading, Latino students' scores grew faster than those in the majority of those districts.  African American scores in math also rose at an impressive rate.

Michael Casserly, executive managing director of the Council of Slap-up City Schools, pointing to the narrowing of the gap between large urban school districts and the rest of the nation when looked at since 2003, said that in general we should exist "encouraged by the progress and then many of the cities accept fabricated."

Is it even reasonable to expect students to do better academically each year?

That is a question that Gov. Jerry Brown, arguably the biggest skeptic about the entire testing enterprise among all the nation's governors, has asked.

"They are getting little children at the historic period of 5 infected with this thought that everything is measurable, and that they are accountable every day to improve," he said in May. "I tin can tell you lot that the thought that you lot can improve every day for the rest of your life is not truthful. I simply call back there is a bit of a life cycle. Things become up and go downward."

That seemed to be a distinctly minority view on Midweek. "It makes sense for kids to ameliorate every twelvemonth," said Minnich, representing the Chief State Schools Officers.  "It is reasonable to wait to see scores going upwardly every twelvemonth."

Wait for that to happen next twelvemonth – or not.

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