OKLAHOMA CITY — EDITOR'S NOTE: Last week Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, announced legislation that seeks to remove the Office of Accountability from under the auspices of the state Board of Education based upon a study funded by the Oklahoma Business and Education Coalition, according to the Associated Press. The study cited a wide gap in student achievement as measured by state tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, and that this gap is "particularly large in Oklahoma compared with other states." The Oklahoma Board of Education called the study "error-filled" and lacking data. Below is a column citing similar conclusions and data, as provided by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, which is a conservative think tank in Oklahoma City. More information about Anderson's study may be found linked to this column online at www.edmondsun.com.
Nearly every state in the country, including Oklahoma, administers achievement tests to public school students in the K-12 years to determine, among other things, who is proficient (at or above grade level) in reading and mathematics skills.
The federal government also administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card, which likewise measures the percentages of children who are proficient in these same two areas. NAEP has a long track record of 38 years, establishing itself as the de facto national standard for achievement.
Unfortunately, nearly every state in the country, including Oklahoma, uses achievement tests significantly inconsistent with the NAEP. In fact, in nearly every case the states use tests that produce markedly inflated numbers of children designated proficient or better as compared to the NAEP.
Unlike the state tests, NAEP exam scores are not available for individual school districts or schools. However, in a recent study, I provided a method to convert Oklahoma's state-reported proficiencies to more realistic NAEP-aligned estimates.
For example, Oklahoma claims 88 percent of its students statewide are proficient in reading (that's an average of the fourth-grade and eighth-grade results), whereas NAEP says only 27 percent of Oklahoma students are proficient. Oklahoma claims 96 percent of Edmond's students are proficient in reading, but my NAEP scale estimate suggests only 47 percent of Edmond's students are proficient.
Same problem in math: Oklahoma says 79 percent of its students are proficient, while NAEP says it's only 27 percent. Oklahoma claims 96 percent of Edmond's students are proficient, but our NAEP estimate says only 53 percent of Edmond's students are proficient.
By comparing the NAEP scores with the testing regimes used by the various states, we find that most states "inflate" the actual performance levels by practicing a type of "grade inflation" wherein they place many more children in the proficient or above category than really deserve that designation. The large numbers of Oklahoma students scoring below proficient on the NAEP is a strong indicator that Oklahoma's school systems are conducting large-scale social promotion — usually accompanied by grade inflation.
A U.S. Department of Education report issued in June 2007 showed that Oklahoma is well above the median of the states when it comes to inflation. Oklahoma's reported proficiencies, which are about three-fold those of the Oklahoma proficiencies measured by the NAEP, apparently give more comfort to stakeholders in Oklahoma's public schools than if more accurate results had been provided.
It appears that education scholar Kevin Carey was on target in an Oct. 11, 2006, column in The Edmond Sun ("State fudging on academic performance measures"): Oklahoma parents "are getting a false impression of where their children really stand."
DAVID V. ANDERSON is an education fellow at the Ocean State Policy Research Institute. Readers may write to him at david.anderson@asoraeducation.com. This column was distributed by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. To learn more about Anderson's study, follow this link, which also has reports about testing efforts in New Mexico and Pennsylvania: http://www.asoraeducation.com/page35/page40/page40.html
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