Last week, a distinguished panel organized by Secretary of Education William J. Bennett revealed plans for an ambitious and costly version of the nation’s "report card" on student achievement. The panel, consisting of 22 members, proposed significant changes to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The redesigned assessment would include state-specific data, measure learning in more core subjects, incorporate out-of-school 17-year-olds, and include a larger sampling of private school students. Additionally, the panel recommended a new governance structure for NAEP that would ensure its independence from any external influence.
The study group contends that these changes would greatly enhance our ability to track the knowledge and capabilities of our children. According to the report titled "The Nation’s Report Card: Improving the Assessment of Student Achievement," the current assessments fail to address the most pressing questions posed by parents, concerned citizens, and educators today. During a press conference held to announce the report, Secretary Bennett expressed his support for the panel’s work, stating that few reform proposals from the 1980s would have a more significant long-term impact on education in the United States. The Secretary pledged to study the proposal’s details and pursue legislation to implement an improved report card.
Regarding the panel’s recommendation to increase annual federal funding for NAEP five-fold, from $5 million to $26 million, Secretary Bennett acknowledged the need for further consideration. However, he reassured his commitment to finding the necessary resources to move forward with the proposed changes. The panel argued that its proposed budget is a small sum compared to the approximately $170 billion allocated to elementary and secondary education this year. They emphasized the urgency of adopting their recommendations, noting that it would take several years to implement the assessment’s redesign and produce test results based on the new structure. Officials from the Education Department estimated that even if Congress promptly enacted the proposals, most of the changes would not be reflected in NAEP tests until 1992. In the Reagan Administration’s budget request for the upcoming fiscal year, funding for NAEP would increase to approximately $7.9 million, with $1 million allocated for planning potential changes in the assessment.
Additional changes to NAEP’s budget to align with the study group’s recommendations would not occur until fiscal year 1989, according to Secretary Bennett. A review of the report by a committee of the National Academy of Education, a distinguished group of experts in the field, characterized the lack of support for NAEP in recent years as "fiscal starvation." This review was published alongside the report.
NAEP, now in its 18th year, is a program authorized by Congress to regularly test a sample of students in subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics. Secretary Bennett formed the study group in May to identify ways to enhance the assessment’s informativeness, usefulness, and efficiency. The panel, chaired by former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, consisted of educators, testing experts, state officials, and private citizens. With funding from the Education Department and various private foundations, including Exxon, Ford, Hewlett, MacArthur, and Matsushita, the panel commissioned 46 background papers and established nine committees to delve into specific questions about NAEP.
The proposed changes seek to provide a more comprehensive and accurate assessment of student achievement across the nation, addressing the concerns of various stakeholders.
“There is a significant level of public interest in the question of ‘How are we doing? What are our children learning?’" he stated.
New Perspective
The panel is just one of the many groups currently proposing that states compare the academic performance of students. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), for instance, has been working on a plan to collect such data and has suggested that NAEP could be the most effective method to do so. Ramsay Selden, director of CCSSO’s state education-assessment center, mentioned that the group still needs to review the panel’s recommendations, but he anticipated that "most of our members will find this an appealing way to proceed, instead of trying to do something similar on our own." The change in attitudes towards state-by-state comparisons since the inception of NAEP in the 1960s is remarkable, according to several observers. "What is being discussed today wouldn’t even have been considered 20 years ago," said Michael W. Kirst, a member of Secretary Bennett’s study group and a professor of education at Stanford University. "Anyone who had suggested it would have been dismissed with laughter." Interest in comparing student performance among states has been fueled in recent years by the substantial amount of funding allocated to state-level education reforms and the annual "wall chart" on educational progress produced by the Department of Education.
The wall chart, which uses scores from the two national college-admissions tests to compare students’ performance across states, has received widespread criticism from educators as being inadequate and misleading. During the press conference last week, Mr. Bennett acknowledged that the wall chart had flaws but stated that the department would continue producing it because "it’s the best we have."
Other Suggestions
The study group emphasized that any changes ultimately implemented in NAEP must maintain consistency with its existing database. "The information that NAEP has generated since 1969 is the most reliable ‘baseline’ data available regarding what children know and can do," the report stated. Some of the key recommendations from the study group include: expanding regular assessments in core subjects like reading, writing, and mathematics to include reading, writing, and literacy; math, science, and technology; and history, geography, and civics; placing more focus on "higher order" thinking skills, such as problem-solving, and exploring the use of new measurement techniques beyond standard multiple-choice formats; changing the grade-level samples from the current grades 3, 7, and 11 to the more significant "transition" grades of 4, 8, and 12; regularly testing out-of-school 17-year-olds and potentially including even older age groups, like 21- and 25-year-olds, in literacy studies; enlarging the sample of private-school students to draw valid conclusions about student achievement in individual grades and major subgroups of private schools. Furthermore, the panel has proposed the creation of an independent agency called the "Education Assessment Council" to establish policies and future directions for NAEP.
Governance
Under the envisioned restructuring, the program would be managed by a separate testing contractor contracted by the federal government. Although NAEP currently has an external committee of experts, its members are appointed by the NAEP contractor, which is currently the Educational Testing Service. With each change in contractor, the committee is reconstituted. The new council’s members would be appointed by the Secretary of Education, serving overlapping five-year terms, from candidates recommended by a permanent, statutory nominating committee. The council members would represent a wide range of testing experts and national, state, and local representatives. The federal government would provide a grant to an independent organization, mandated by law, to house the council. The organization would receive up to $2.5 million annually and potentially employ around 10 professional staff members. The panel recommended that the new council be established and operational in time for the 1990 assessment.
"Compliments and Caveats"
“It would not be wise to assume that the new NAEP will be devoid of unintended consequences." Some of the academy’s "warnings" include the following: NAEP should be cautious about taking on a wide range of related research activities. "The new NAEP, with its extensive agenda, is at risk of spreading itself too thin and compromising the quality of its main activities," the committee warned. This opinion was supported by Linda Darling-Hammond, a member of the study group and director of the RAND Corporation’s education and human-resources program, in a statement included with the report. A separate group should be established, independent of NAEP, to monitor the impact of the test on schools. "Although previous NAEP activity has had little influence on school practices, this may change significantly" once the assessment is altered, and "not all of these changes may be beneficial." NAEP should avoid developing hierarchies of skills and subskills based on assumptions about how students learn. The committee noted that more research is needed in this area, stating that "it is far from clear that a single approach to learning can ever be appropriate for all children." Such hierarchies, they cautioned, could serve as the basis for a curriculum.
The committee similarly advised against making broad generalizations about the factors that contribute to success or failure in school based on NAEP data. "[F]ew such questions are suitable for examination within the current NAEP design," they stated. Continued caution should be exercised when comparing states based on average test scores. "Many factors impact the ranking of states, districts, and schools," the committee stated. "Simple comparisons are susceptible to misuse and are unlikely to inform meaningful efforts to improve schools."
Important Aim
Despite these cautions, H. Thomas James, vice chairman and study director for the Secretary’s panel and president emeritus of the Spencer Foundation, stated that he did not anticipate much opposition to the panel’s recommendations from the education community. "The opposition from teachers and school administrators began to fade early on in the history of NAEP and has now virtually disappeared," he said. Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a member of the academy’s review committee, acknowledged that revamping NAEP had been a lesser priority for most education groups. However, he added that there was a "recognization among all these groups that, even though it’s not a cause they champion, strengthening NAEP is one of the most important accomplishments we can achieve in this phase of education reform."
Copies of the report can be purchased for $9 each, prepaid, from the National Academy of Education, 108 Longfellow Hall, Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
