Friday, April 13, 2007

Skills Gap on State, Federal Tests Grows, Study Finds

Far greater shares of students are proficient on state reading and mathematics tests than on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and those gaps have grown to unprecedented levels since the No Child Left Behind Act became law in 2002, concludes a new study.

The study by Policy Analysis for California Education, a nonprofit research group based at the University of California, Berkeley, was released during the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The researchers compiled state and federal testing results for the period 1992 to 2006 from 12 states: including Kentucky.

In all but two states the disparity between the share of students proficient on state reading tests and on NAEP, a congressionally mandated program that tests a representative sample of students in every state, grew or remained the same from 2002 to 2006. A similar widening occurred between state and federal gauges of math performance in eight of 12 states.

Those findings call into question whether the state-reported gains are real or illusory, according to the researchers.

This from Lynn Olsen at Education Week.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi. I like your blog. It's great that you're keeping up with research and sharing it with people. I had the good fortune to come up through the Fayette County schools and to have parents who themselves valued education. They were very much involved in my schools and encouraged my sister and me to read and draw and make music and write and travel. So now in middle age I consider myself a lifelong learner. A new friend of mine has proposed setting up some kind of national network that would bring teachers and researchers together in virtual communities. You may find her idea interesting; I posted it on my blog.
Cheers
Paul Baker
EducationPR
www.pbaker.wordpress.com