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The education reform act known as “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) is supposed to be the hallmark domestic legislation of the Bush administration. At its heart, NCLB is the call for all students to be “proficient” in reading and mathematics by 2014. To reach that goal, NCLB expects each state to define proficiency as it sees fit and design its own tests. The Thomas Fordham Institute has just finished an extensive study of NCLB and the entire concept of “proficiency.”
- First, the Fordham Institute investigated three research questions related to NCLB:
- How consistent are various states’ expectations for proficiency in reading and mathematics? In other words, is it harder to pass some states’ tests than others?
- Is there evidence that states’ expectations for proficiency have changed since NCLB’s enactment? If so, have they become more or less difficult to meet? In other words, is it getting easier or harder to pass state tests?
- How closely are proficiency standards calibrated across grades? In other words, is a state’s bar for achievement set straight, sloping or uneven?
- Second, what follows is a succinct summary of the Fordham Institute’s findings using these three research questions:
- State tests vary greatly in their difficulty. Among the states they studied, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Michigan generally have the lowest proficiency standards, while South Carolina, California, Maine, and Massachusetts have the highest.
- Most state tests have not changed in difficulty in recent years. However, 8 states saw their reading and/or math tests become significantly easier in at least two grades, while 4 states’ tests became more difficult.
- Improvements in passing rates on state tests can largely be explained by declines in the difficulty of those tests. Because many states are “teaching to the test,” the declines really do raise questions about whether the NCLB-era achievement gains reported by many states represent true growth in student learning.
- Math tests are consistently more difficult to pass than reading tests.
- Eighth-grade tests are consistently and dramatically more difficult to pass than those in earlier grades (even taking into account obvious differences in subject-matter complexity and children’s academic development). Many states are setting the bar significantly lower in elementary school than in middle school, giving parents, educators and the public the false impression that younger students are on track for future success. This may indeed not be the case!
The authors of the report conclude that five years into NCLB, there is no common understanding of what “proficiency” actually means. Its definition varies from state to state, year to year, subject to subject and grade level to grade level. The central flaw, then, of NCLB is that it permits each state to establish its own definition of what constitutes “proficiency.” They write: “This suggests that the goal of ‘100% proficiency’ has no coherent meaning.” It is doubtful therefore that we are really that much closer to more rigorous and uniform learning in the US. That seems as elusive as ever! In fact, I would argue that making academic test scores the standard may actually be detrimental to the most important focus of education—the development of character and integrity. These traits are far more important to genuine success in life than achieving well on a standardized test, where the actual concept of “proficiency” is elusive, at best!
See “The Proficiency Illusion.” This is a publication of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. |
