History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
(Mis)Understanding the NAEP results
- 03-29-2010
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Blog by Chad Alderman/Ed Sector
Stories from the NY Times, Mother Jones, and the Washington Post bemoaned the flat National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) reading scores released Wednesday. Jay Matthews called it the epitaph of the No Child Left Behind era. The results aren’t quite so simple. See, NAEP is different than most standardized tests. It takes a sample of the current population in every state, so this year’s population of kids is compared to the last time the test was administered. There’s an automatic correction for changing demographics, so as America has gotten less white, so has NAEP. In statistical terms this creates something called Simpson’s Paradox, which makes trend lines seem worse than they really are because of a hidden variable, in this case, race. (more...)
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