Whether we use NAEP or state assessments, reading performance in the US is a serious problem, and trying to excuse this away just doesn’t work.
There’s been a lot of discussion from some teachers and Ed school professors about how the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) standard for reading proficiency is simply set too high. Some of that discussion centers on a NAEP process that develops equivalent NAEP scores for each state assessment’s proficiency standard (accessible here: https://tinyurl.com/4hspr6y5).
The results of that study for 2022 Grade 4 NAEP Reading are found in the graphic below. You can see that state standards very widely. Virginia, for example, set a proficiency standard below even the threshold score required to be rated a NAEP “Basic” performance. Massachusetts, at the other end of the scale, actually set a standard slightly above the threshold NAEP uses to declare a student proficient in reading.
About 1/3 of the way up the standards graphic from the least demanding state you will see Kentucky, highlighted with a blue arrow, set a proficiency standard about in the middle of the scoring range NAEP only considers to be only Basic level reading.
Given its easy standards, those who want us to believe there is no crisis in reading would surely want to be able to say that Kentucky is reporting far better results than what the NAEP reported.
However, as you can see in the insert below, Kentucky’s own state assessment didn’t return much rosier statistics for Grade 4 Reading in 2022 (Kentucky School Report Card Available here: https://reportcard.kyschools.us. NAEP Data Explorer online here: https://tinyurl.com/2hdcmrnr).
On Kentucky’s assessment, despite the state’s notably lower proficiency standard than NAEP, fewer than half, just 46%, of all the state’s public school fourth graders scored Proficient or better. That doesn’t seem all that much different from NAEP’s proficiency rate for the Bluegrass State of 31%. Even using its own, rather undemanding standards, Kentucky must report that fewer than half of its public school students are reading adequately.
How about the lowest performers, those which NAEP grades as “Below Basic” and which Kentucky reports are “Novice” readers? The difference here is even closer than for the proficient-to-proficient example, a spread of just 9 percentage points. So, even using Kentucky’s watered-down standards, almost 1 in 3 of the state’s students are in this very bottom performance category.
Label this what you will, this sort of performance is far below what is needed. Making excuses for a system that continues to provide such statistics isn’t acceptable.
Still unanswered is a serious question: which standard better reflects the performance students really need in reading – NAEP’s or Kentucky’s? I’ll have more on that shortly.
Score insert below by Innes
