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. These naysayers claim this creates a false sense of crisis when things actually are pretty much OK. But are the attacks on NAEP valid? Or, do the cautionary tales NAEP is telling us need to be taken very seriously?
I took a look at that question some time back by comparing the message from Kentucky’s NAEP scores to data for the state from two different tests from ACT, Inc. Those ACT tests provided statistics on the proportion of students that had reasonable chances of earning either a “C” (75% chance) or “B” (50% chance) on related college freshman courses. ACT calls these Readiness Benchmark scores and has reported them for a number of years.
Kentucky offered a unique opportunity to conduct this study because the state tested all public school students with the ACT’s Explore test for many years and also has tested all public school students with the ACT College Entrance Test for many years, as well.
So, how did that turn out? You can read this report for the full story: https://tinyurl.com/76uwaee8, but here is one example of what you’ll find. In these figures, the correlation between the percentages of Kentucky public school students scoring NAEP Proficient or Above and the percentages of the same cohorts of students reaching the ACT’s Readiness Benchmark scores are compared.