The National Assessment for Educational Progress

Recently, my eighth grade students took part in the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP).  On the US Department of Education’s website, it states that the NAEP is “a common yardstick,” meant “to provide a clear picture of student academic progress over time.”  The test is given to randomly selected school districts across the country, and is mandated for any state receiving Title I funds.  

The data yielded form the NAEP is used to provide information on how individual states are matching up academically with other states in the union.  The repercussions here are important for a district like Baltimore City.  If Maryland scores lower on the NAEP than other states do, it follows that the MSA would become a more challenging assessment.  Our district would thus be under more pressure to perform, and the education of our students would become more structured around standardized testing.

These are serious repercussions, so we better be sure that the NAEP is in fact yielding accurate data.  In my experience with the NAEP, this was simply not the case. There was absolutely no incentive for my students to try their best.  After the proctor read some introductory remarks about the test, she faced a barrage of questions from my students:  Are we graded on this?  Why do I have to take the science test?  Why do I have to take the reading test?  Why I am even taking this test?

In many ways, I agreed with my students.  When I took the SAT, my name was on that test, and my score would be an important factor in my college selection process.   My attitude towards the test would have been quite a bit different if I had taken it anonymously.  

So what is the incentive for our students on the NAEP?  Fourteen is a tough age, and eighth graders rarely do things out of the “goodness of their hearts,” in particular, to help out large institutions like the US Department of Education.  

So here’s an idea: why don’t we look at our students’ Terra Nova scores?  This, too, is a nationally given assessment, and in this case the students do have an incentive; their scores go a long way in determining which high school they attend.  Too often we think that instruction alone yields higher scores on tests like the NAEP, the MSA, and the Terra Nova.  But what about the motivating factor?