Q: How do test scores reflect a state's commitment to raising academic standards?
A: All fourth- and eighth-graders in each state take that state's math and reading tests. In addition, some students in each state take the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as "the nation's report card." Some states have designed relatively easy reading and math tests aimed at making students appear proficient in those subjects. But when fourth- and eighth-graders in those states take the NAEP, they don't do nearly as well.
Q: How do states make tests easier?
A: States tend to have more multiple-choice questions while NAEP also asks students to flesh out responses through essays and word problems that encourage children to show how they arrived at an answer. Some states also lowered minimum passing scores, enabling more children to score proficient from one year to the next.
Q: Why are so many states not demanding more of students?
A: The No Child Left Behind law punishes schools that don't show "adequate yearly progress" toward the 2014 deadline by labeling them as underperforming, allowing students to transfer to better schools, and forcing school districts to spend money on tutoring. Critics of the 2002 law say that has spurred states to keep standards low — and make tests easy — so schools can show gradual improvement over time.
Q: What do state officials say?
A: Many say it's not valid to compare state tests with the NAEP test, and some experts agree. They say NAEP was never designed to be a national benchmark for comparing state standards. And it's administered only to a sample of students, each of whom takes only a portion of the test. Teachers and students focus much more on state tests because those determine whether schools make adequate progress and, in some cases, whether seniors get a high school diploma.
Q: Wasn't the No Child Left Behind law supposed to produce tougher reading and math requirements?
A: Aside from the 2014 proficiency deadline, the 2002 law requires only that states test more often and that they close the achievement gap between white students and other groups, such as minority students and those with disabilities. Congress chose to let states decide which standards and which tests to use in determining what students need to know.
Q: What can be done to make sure states honor the goals of No Child Left Behind?
A: The disparity between students' performance on state tests and their performance on NAEP has prompted new calls for national standards that would require every student to learn the same material at the same pace and take the same test. But that option stands little chance of winning approval, given the nation's longstanding tradition of respecting states' rights.
