Gains on State Reading Tests Evaporate on 2005 NAEP
Has a “Race to the Bottom” Begun?
Gains on State Reading Tests Evaporate on NAEP

Decline in 8th Grade Scores Points to “Middle School Slump”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Almost twenty states have reported gains from 2003 to 2005 in the percentage of eighth-graders rated “proficient” (or the equivalent) in reading on their own state tests. Among those states, however, only three show any progress at even the “basic” level on the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, according to an analysis by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. None of these states made any progress in eighth grade reading at NAEP’s “proficient” level.

The worst offenders are Alabama, California, Idaho, Arizona, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, each of which reported an additional five to 11 percent of eighth grade students becoming proficient over the past two years as gauged by state test results, yet none of which showed any progress on NAEP from 2003 to 2005. (Five of these states actually declined.) This poses an important question: are states lowering their own standards and/or making it easier to pass their tests, or do these differences reflect idiosyncratic state approaches to standards and curricula? (See figure 1.)

The three states that posted gains in eighth-grade reading on both their own assessments and NAEP were Delaware, Tennessee, and North Dakota. Even there, however, we find large discrepancies between the percentage of students scoring at the proficient level on the state’s test versus those scoring proficient on NAEP. In Tennessee, for example, 88 percent of eighth-graders were deemed proficient in 2005 on the state reading assessment, while only 26% reached this level on NAEP.

Eighth grade is not unique. At the fourth grade level, only 8 of 25 states reporting gains from 2003 to 2005 showed even one-third as much progress at the “basic” level of NAEP (see figure 2). Progress was generally smaller still at the NAEP “proficient” level.

“The much-discussed ‘race to the bottom’ appears to have begun,” said Fordham Foundation president Chester E. Finn, Jr. “If states ease their standards, construct simple-minded tests, or set low passing scores, they can mislead their own citizens and educators into thinking that just about everyone is proficient. Congress had the wisdom to insist that NAEP function as an ‘external audit’ of state (and national) progress toward proficiency under NCLB. Now we see just how important this is. Plenty of governors and state school chiefs have rushed to announce strong gains on state tests that evaporate under the scrutiny of ‘the nation’s report card.’ This poses a credibility problem for standards-based reform and raises questions about the states’ abilities to stick to their accountability guns in the age of No Child Left Behind.”

Using data compiled by Education Week, Fordham’s research team examined gains made from 2003 to 2005 on state assessments (for all states with available and comparable data), then compared these gains to changes in the percentage of students scoring at the basic-and-above and the proficient-and-above levels on NAEP to determine which jurisdictions show gains on both their own state tests and the national benchmark test.

“If states can’t be trusted to hold the line on accountability, the inevitable solution may be a national approach to standards and tests,” said Foundation vice president Michael J. Petrilli. “While you might expect to see stronger gains on state tests tied to state standards and curricula, a significant amount of those gains should show up on a benchmark test like NAEP, especially at the lower ‘basic’ level. Otherwise you have to ask whether states are blurring the truth to make themselves look better.”