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Use and Misuse of NAEP Scores

Maine's scores in the nation's only federally mandated test for students haven't improved for the most part over the past decade, while many other states have gained ground.

The results of the 2003 National Assessment of Education Progress echo the trends of the Scholastic Assessment Test, which is taken by college-bound students, and the Maine Education Assessment.

In all three tests, Maine's scores have remained relatively flat.

At the same time, other states have boosted their scores significantly. Also, the National Assessment, like the SAT, shows that students in four New England states are outperforming students in Maine. Only Rhode Island scored lower.

"We have kind of flattened out, and some other states are gaining on us, and some are surpassing us," said David Silvernail, director of the Maine Education Policy Research Institute.

Some say that the scores highlight the success of the aggressive school reform efforts favored in other states in contrast to Maine's more cautious approach.

Maine students continue to perform better than average on the tests.

Maine's version of standards-based education, Learning Results, was developed in the 1990s and is not yet fully implemented. It calls for each school district to create its own way to assess student performance and gives a minor role to standardized testing.

State officials are concerned about the lack of upward movement in the scores. Patrick Phillips, Maine's deputy commissioner of education, said it's more difficult for Maine to show improvement because its children are already performing at a high level and there is less room for improvement.

"It's hard to bring up performance that was already pretty strong in the beginning," Phillips said.

The state Department of Education's official response to the NAEP results, as presented in its press release, was upbeat. Commissioner Susan Gendron noted that the fourth-graders' math scores increased 8 points since 2000, and eighth-graders' scores were stable.

Gendron called the math results "terrific news for Maine's teachers and students."

But nationally the scores increased more than Maine's scores. The math scores for fourth-graders increased by 9 points, and for eighth-graders by 5 points.

The National Assessment is scored on a 500-point scale. Known as "the nation's report card," the test is given every few years to a sampling of fourth- and eighth-graders in math, reading and other subjects. The technique is similar to that used by pollsters.

States use the results as a barometer to see how they are doing compared to the rest of the nation. This year was the first year in which all 50 states were required to participate as a condition of receiving federal education funds.

Nearly 700,000 children were tested nationally during the early part of 2003. More than 11,000 students in 251 schools in Maine took the test in January and February.

The test is the only national measure for student proficiency in reading and mathematics and is used to confirm state-developed tests such as the MEA.

The math score for Maine's fourth-graders, 238, was 4 points above the national average. But the gap has narrowed every year since 1992. That year, Maine's score was 13 points above average.

In 1996, Maine students in both grade levels led the nation's scores in math. To celebrate Maine's success, Gov. Angus King invited 1,000 students to Augusta to honor their achievements.

The 2003 math scores put Maine in the middle tier of states, said Kevin Carey, a senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Education Trust.

Maine's reading scores are still in the upper tier, he said.

But other states are catching up and in some cases surpassing Maine, he said. Massachusetts' eighth-graders are an example. Five years ago Massachusetts had a reading score that was 2 points below Maine's, he said. The Bay State's scores are now 5 points ahead.

States that have boosted their scores include Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, New York and Florida, Carey said.

The National Assessment classifies students into four categories: advanced, proficient, basic and below basic. A congressional panel in the 1990s concluded that the levels tend to underestimate performance, while some critics say the levels are set too high.

In Maine, 29 percent of eighth-graders performed at or above proficient in math. In the top state, Minnesota, 44 percent of eighth-graders performed at the same level.

When Maine's students are graded by scale scores, the state has usually ranked among the top in the nation, Silvernail said. "But at the proficiency level there is a different picture," he said. "We rank first among the mediocre."

Maine's fourth-grade math scores put the state in a middle group of 21 states that are considered not significantly different from one another. Another group of eight states is viewed as performing at a higher level. The state's eighth-grade math scores were also put in the middle group.

About 70 percent of Maine's eighth-graders are not proficient in math, according to the National Assessment. That means most eighth-graders are not ready to take the kind of math courses they need to go to college, said Frank Heller of the Maine School Choice Coalition. He noted that eighth-graders are less proficient than fourth-graders.

"That means the longer the child stays in the public schools in Maine, the worse off they get in math," he said. "If the Baldacci administration wants to attract corporations to Maine, they certainly aren't going to do it with NAEP math scores. Companies aren't going to come to Maine unless they got some kind of dumb job that will require low-cost labor."

Maine students still excel in reading. In the eighth-grade proficiency reading scores, only 10 states did as well as or better than Maine, including Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, which had the highest level of proficiency in the nation.

In fourth-grade reading, only five states did better, four of them in New England.

Massachusetts boys have shown significant improvement in reading while the scores of Maine boys have remained about the same, said J.H. Kennedy, the Maine coordinator for the National Assessment.

Kennedy said Maine officials plan to take a look at education practices in other states, particularly in Massachusetts, Vermont and Minnesota.



— Tom Bell
State's scores flat as others gain on federal test
Press Herald
2003-11-23
http://www.pressherald.com/news/state/031123test.shtml

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