National School Testing Urged
From washingtonpost.com:
Many states, including Maryland and Virginia, are reporting student proficiency rates so much higher than what the most respected national measure has found that several influential education experts are calling for a move toward a national testing system.
The growing talk of national testing and standards comes in the fifth year of the No Child Left Behind era.
That federal law sought to hold public schools accountable for academic performance but left it up to states to design their own assessments.
So the definition of proficiency -- what it means for a student to perform at grade level -- varies from coast to coast.
The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as "the nation's report card," show 32 percent of Maryland fourth-graders at or above proficiency in reading.
Virginia announced last week that 86 percent of fourth-graders reached that level on its reading test, but the NAEP data show 37 percent at or above proficiency.
The political obstacles are formidable, including a long tradition of local control over public education.
A recent study by Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, found that states regularly inflate student achievement.
Unlike state tests, which are used to help rate public schools and measure achievement of all students in certain grades, NAEP has a more limited mission.
NAEP standards were designed to establish what students ought to know to do well in the next grade and beyond, said Mark D. Musick, former president of the Southern Regional Education Board, who helped draft them.
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