Doug Christensen, the Nebraska education commissioner, is resigning...
Mr. Christensen has fought for years to keep Nebraska’s unique, district-created assessments, saying local teachers are best equipped to judge their students’ achievement. But the legislature is considering whether to make standardized tests the state’s only tool to measure academic success. ("Nebraska Bill Would Boost State Tests' Status," March 26, 2008).
Nebraska currently is the only state that does not use statewide standardized tests to meet accountability requirements under the NCLB law. And while the state education department has worked hard to make the home-grown assessments comply with the federal law, that hasn’t happened, said Jim Scheer, a member of the Nebraska board of education. “We need to find something that allows us to become compliant, because the federal government and NCLB are not going to go away,” he said.
But while the state legislation has some district-level support, it is drawing sharp criticism from top Nebraska education officials and standardized-testing critics nationally.“I see nothing positive in terms of good public policy or good education policy in state testing,” said Douglas D. Christensen, the state commissioner of education. “I’ve spent my life trying to build up an accountability system that starts from the classroom and builds up,” as opposed to one that starts at the
top and trickles down, he said...
1 comment:
Nebraska legislators probably should be concerned. The state's performance on the NAEP hasn't exactly been stellar. In grade 4 reading there has been no statistically detectable improvement since 1992. On grade 4 math things have been flat since 2003 while the rest of the country saw improvement. On grade 4 science, Nebraska hasn’t participated since 2000. At that time, even Kentucky beat Nebraska in that subject, something which certainly must have raised Cornhusker eyes.
In grade 8 reading, scores have been flat since 2002. Ditto for math since 2003 while, again, the national average was increasing. Nebraska did “whup” us fairly well on 8th grade science in 2000.
Keep in mind that doing state to state comparisons and individual state analysis over time with NAEP is a tricky business today. The NAEP report cards make it clear that you have to consider changes in exclusion and accommodation rates along with different demographics over time. I don’t have time to go into that in detail, but I did note the math exclusion rates in Nebraska in 2007 were low. NAEP hasn’t decided on how to correct for these issues in any event.
Still, were I in Nebraska, and I saw grade 4 reading only one point above Kentucky’s and science worse than Kentucky’s, I’d get a bit worried, too.
Richard Innes
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