BREAKING: Offshoots concerning national scores!

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2018

One lone pilgrim responds:
In response to last week's award-winning "Gaps in Chicago" report, Kevin Drum took a look at Naep scores from some big urban systems. To review his post, click here.

Drum is the only person who ever considers such matters. That said, he seems to have made a pair of possible technical semi-errors in his post. Since we all want to know how to use Naep data, these apparent possible semi-errors are probably worth reviewing.

Nationwide, the black/white gap is actually smaller: Looking at five major cities, Drum compared Naep results from 2003 to those from 2017. As he ended his post, he stated this gloomy conclusion:
DRUM (6/1/18) This is just a snapshot of five cities, but...the story is roughly the same if you look at average scores for all big cities that NAEP tests: there’s been broad progress, but white kids have improved more than black kids. The black-white achievement gap has widened by about two points nationwide since 2003. We still have a disturbingly long way to go if we ever intend to give black kids a fair start in life.
"The black-white achievement gap has widened by about two points nationwide?" That may be true for kids who live in big cities, however "big cities" may be defined. But it isn't true for black and white kids nationwide.

If we look at all kids nationwide, the black-white gap in Grade 8 math has narrowed by 2.23 points over that 15-year span. (The Hispanic-white achieved gap has narrowed by almost five points.)

That isn't a gigantic narrowing, but most kids don't live in big cities. Among all kids across the land, the gaps are somewhat smaller in Grade 8 math than they were in 2003.

Test scores from DC: Drum showed data from five major cities—Boston, New York, Chicago, Washington DC and Los Angeles. This introduces a basic problem concerning Naep scores from DC.

Drum used scores from the system called DCPS—but DCPS is only part of the larger DC public school system. The Naep deals with this in a clumsy, confusing way. Here's the way it rolls:

Washington's public schools are roughly half "public charter," half "traditional public." Confusingly, the schools which bear the name "DCPS" are only the latter half of that pie.

If you want to consider all of Washington's public schools, you can't limit yourself to DCPS, which is, for whatever reason, the lower-scoring half of the overall system. Indeed, here are the relevant scores from last year, both for the whole of Washington's public schools and for DCPS alone:
Average scores Grade 8 math, Naep, 2017
Washington DC, white students: 322.69
Washington DC, black students: 256.99

DCPS, white students 317.59
DCPS, black students: 249.62
The top scores include results from the DC public school charters and from DCPS. The giant black/white gaps reflect the fact that DC's schools enroll a relatively small number of white students, whose families tend to be high income and extremely high SES.

Alas! On the Naep Data Explorer, you have to look under "States" to get the data for the whole of the DC public schools, even though DC famously isn't a state. The Naep handles this in a confusing way. We'll have to admit, it has sometimes made us wonder what else they might be handling poorly.

Scores have begun to decline: Drum looked at scores from 2003 through 2017. Sadly, he could have painted a brighter picture had he stopped at 2013.

That's right! After decades of gains, Naep scores have actually dropped somewhat in the last two testings. Here are tsome gloomy facts concerning Grade 8 math:
Changes in average scores nationwide
Grade 8 math, Naep, 2013-2017

White students: -1.03 points
Black students: -3.13 points
Hispanic students: -2.53 points
Those are fairly small score drops, but they reverse decades of steady growth. As you can see, black and Hispanic kids lost a bit more ground than their white counterparts. That leads us to this point:

From 2003 through 2013, the black/white gap had been reduced by 4.33 points. But since that time, the black/white gap has widened a bit. These are all fairly minor changes, but the direction is bad.

We have a speculation as to what may have happened since 2013. It involves deliberately scaring the sh*t out of American children, especially "minority" kids, in service to the moral imperatives of us liberal adults.

That said, our idea would be a mere speculation. The numbers are at the Naep Data Explorer for all journalists to ignore.

Luckily, nobody cares: A final note about the total disinterest on display at the New York Times:

Everyone agrees that the Naep is our most significant educational testing program. It's the widely-lauded "gold standard!" Tests are administered every two years.

The 2017 results were released on April 10 of this year. As best we can tell from a Nexis search, the Times still hasn't published a single word about these latest results.

These "gold standard" results appear once every two years. The New York Times can't be bothered to report, analyze, ask further questions of the "experts" or even pretend to care.

Lawrence hasn't discussed this either. Like Trump, he never will.

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  2. "Drum is the only person who ever considers such matters."

    This is patently absurd and so false as to be ridiculous.

    First, Drum likes charts and graphs. His interest is there, not with education per se. You'll notice that his graph cover a wide range of topics, having in common that they are based on quantitative data. So he is attracted here to the NAEP scores, not to what they say about kids learning.

    Second, there are lots of people who write about education issues. They write in publications and at websites that are specific to education. Or at sites like education.com. But when I was looking around, I discovered that the NY Times has an Education section. So does Forbes. I'll bet a lot of mainstream media sites have a page devoted to education. They just don't write about NAEP scores obsessively. So that means no one cares about education except Somerby.

    This is a farce.

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    Replies
    1. Perhaps Somerby is engaging in the same kind of comedy as Andy Kaufman? Waiting to see if we catch on and laughing at us in the meantime, for ever taking him seriously.

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    2. LOL, not sure if this is top notch parody, or crippling autism.

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  3. "black-white achievement gap"

    Fight zombie infection, Bob. Clearly, you're succumbing to it. While it's (hopefully) not too late, cut your reading of obnoxious liberal hacks (yes, that's you, Kevin) to a minimum...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
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  4. "We have a speculation as to what may have happened since 2013. It involves deliberately scaring the sh*t out of American children, especially "minority" kids, in service to the moral imperatives of us liberal adults.

    That said, our idea would be a mere speculation."

    We can't be real sure, but it probably has something to do with those damn liberals. It's always their fault. Even though the NAEP test is what it is and hasn't changed, somehow, those liberals have caused the student test-takers to do worse.

    Okey dokey there, Bob. Be sure and leave the speculation unstated. We wouldn't want to confirm its crackpot nature.

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  5. "Everyone agrees that the Naep is our most significant educational testing program. It's the widely-lauded "gold standard!"

    Everyone? We know the NAEP describes it this way, especially when they quote that description offered up by the Washington Post editorial board. (https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/parents/2012469.pdf)

    Bob certainly wants us all to understand this fact, since he himself repeats the description endlessly.

    Meanwhile, how many of Bob's readers actually know anything about the test and its methodology? Who decides what questions measure proficiency at what grade? Is that anything like setting a grade-level standard for schools? Does the test change over time? Is the test mandatory for all students? What is the sample size?

    To answer the last two questions:

    "Federal law specifies that NAEP is voluntary for every student, school, school district, and state. "

    "NATIONAL SAMPLE SIZES WERE:

    MATHEMATICS 149,400 4th-graders from 7,840 schools

    144,900 8th-graders from 6,500 schools
     
    READING

    148,800 4th-graders from 7,830 schools
    141,800 8th-graders from 6,500 schools"
    (https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2017_highlights/)

    What is the methodology for choosing the sample?

    Etc...

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    Replies
    1. That's a deep dive into the weeds for someone to take without a good reason. What is your reason for believing that any of this would matter for the questions Somerby generally raises? These samples are so large that the impact of most of these factors would likely be negligible.

      Your questions about the questions are more important. This stuff is discussed at the NAEP website. I have looked at it before when we were talking about curriculum (when Common Core was first being implemented) and I wrote a comment about it. Since Somerby never reads his comments, it had no impact on anything he writes, or apparently thinks about.

      There are so many aspects of education that Somerby could be discussing here. He once found a cheating scandal by looking at test data, so he is stuck on that and never writes about anything else related to education. A mind is a terrible thing to waste (or not to have one).

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    2. Agreed. I was trying to suggest that Somerby, who tells us to disbelieve everything we read in the Times or the Post, simply accepts the NAEP test results as gospel without examining the test in a deeper way or questioning its methodology or assumptions. He has never explained anything about the test to his readers, so it's unlikely most of them have a clear understanding of it. Though that's just an assumption of course. The point with the sampling is that I wonder if most people realize that the test isn't testing every student, just a very small sample of students, and that therefore some statistical procedure has to be put in place to select the sample, a potential "black box". Everything I've learned about the NAEP I have learned on my own. The only thing Somerby ever says about it is that it's the "gold standard."

      He criticizes those who would increase standards in schools, but doesn't question the decisions that go into creating the NAEP test questions themselves.

      I'm not suggesting the test is bad, but I am suggesting Somerby's inconsistency here and his unwillingness to notice it.

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  6. "We have a speculation as to what may have happened since 2013. It involves deliberately scaring the sh*t out of American children, especially "minority" kids, in service to the moral imperatives of us liberal adults."

    What on earth is Somerby talking about with this?

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    Replies
    1. Jonny? Dave? deadrat?

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    2. Dammit, Somerby is a media critic, doggone it.

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    3. There is anecdotal evidence that standardized testing scares the bejeezus out of some test takers. Kids may erroneously think that failing a test means being held back in school. Some of the tests certainly scare the bejeezus out of the test givers since a school’s performance on these tests can affect the jobs, careers, reputation, etc. of the schools’ educationist apparat. It certainly seems plausible that young children would respond to such fears by becoming fearful themselves.

      Are educationists “deliberately” scaring children with tests? Well, they’re certainly deliberately giving the tests. But text anxiety is a well-studied phenomenon, so I wouldn’t think there’d be many who would think the extra stress would produce better results.

      I’m afraid I’m stumped by “the moral imperatives of … liberal adults.” Is there some deeply held belief that compels liberals to support standardized testing? Is there some deeply help belief that compels liberals to support scaring children about standardized testing? A brief time spent in the google on the intertubes finds some evidence that more liberals than conservatives support the so-called “opt out” movement, which urges parents to refuse to let schools test their children.

      That’s the best I can do.

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  7. Why should the NY Times bother with facts? They're going to report the chosen narrative.

    ReplyDelete
  8. i think no body really cares about the minor changes

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