“States Found to Vary Widely on Education,” The New York Times, June 8, 2007, By Tamar Lewin
Summary by Matthew Feinstein
In the recent article “States Found to Vary Widely on Education”, Tamar Lewin of The New York Times highlights the growing disparity in academic standards from state to state. A United States Department of Education report released last week has, for the first time, quantified these variances. Detractors of “No Child Left Behind”, President Bush’s flagship education program, directly attribute these inconsistencies to what they see as a failed education policy. The report recognizes the inherent inequalities fostered by a system that was designed to protect state autonomy, while expecting national uniformity in education standards. Lewin notes that this report is likely to embolden critics of “No Child Left Behind” who advocate a national standard to ensure that all children educated in the United States are on a level playing field.
The report attempts to calibrate statewide standards to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“NAEP”), largely seen as the high-water mark in educational proficiency testing. Further, the report notes that not one state has set its proficiency level as high as the national test does. Rather, most states’ proficiency standard is closer to the “basic” achievement level on the NAEP, the lowest of the test’s three scoring categories.
Lewin illustrates these disparities by juxtaposing two bordering states. Missouri , on the one hand, would require eighth graders to attain a score of 311 on the national math test in order to be judged proficient on the statewide test. This is actually a higher standard than the national test requires to be judged proficient. On the other hand is Tennessee , which exemplifies the opposite end of the spectrum. There, a student will be categorized as proficient by scoring above 230 on the national test, far below the lowest level of acceptability, “basic”, on the national test. Another interesting finding that Lewin points out is that “the differences between state proficiency standards were sometimes more than double the national gap between minority and white students’ reading levels.” The point Lewin appears to be explaining is that state by state assessment standard differentiation is so extreme as to remove much of the statistical relevance of state standards.
Lewin reveals the apparent parodox fostered by NCLB, in that it encourages states to create easier tests in order to avoid sanctions. Education experts that make this critique advocate a national standard. However, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings feels that it is too early to jump on board with a national standard and that it would be premature to judge state standards as being too low.
The article concludes by pointing to a survey released by the Center for Educational Policy which found that since NCLB was enacted in 2002, “student achievement had increased and the racial achievement gap narrowed in many states.” However, Michael J. Petrilli, Vice President of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, retorted that “‘even if students are making progress on state tests, if tests are incredibly easy, that doesn’t mean much.’”
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20B16F834540C7B8CDDAF0894DF404482
