Feeds: 
symbol identifies content for paid subscribers only.
ARNE DUNCAN AND TEST SCORES.
Ezra is absolutely right that the strength of Arne Duncan at the Department of Education will be his ability to synthesize the best approaches of both major camps in the Democratic education wars; those who focus on poverty, and those who focus on shaking up bureaucracies. But just a reminder to Ezra, Seyward Darby, and other folks who are lauding test score gains under Duncan in Chicago (or under any other superintendent): A major problem of the testing apparatus under No Child Left Behind is that states can make up their own standards. A report from the Center for American Progress and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that Illinois is in the middle of the pack when it comes to the rigor of its standards.
So blogger-sociologist Eduwonkette, who works handily with statistics, looked at Chicago's performance not according to Illinois tests, but according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Also known as "The Nation's Report Card," the NAEP is administered by the Department of Education to students across the country and, in typical American fashion, counts for nothing, despite experts' recognition of its findings as the best benchmark we've got. Eduwonkette found that under Duncan's tenure, gaps between black and white students actually grew:
There are no statistically significant declines in these gaps in 4th or 8th grade reading or math. In many cases - for example, 4th and 8th grade math and 8th grade reading - it's not that the black-white achievement gap is declining, but not by enough to be statistically significant. These gaps are actually growing. Sigh.
This doesn't meant Duncan is a bad superintendent, or that we can't learn anything from him, or that he shouldn't be secretary of education. His leadership on early childhood education, polytechnic secondary schools, and careful growth of the charter sector is a model. But we have to be very careful when we talk about student achievement and the achievement gap, because we just don't have agreed-upon ways of measuring success and failure. Indeed, that's a major problem with NCLB that I hope Duncan will address as secretary.
--Dana Goldstein
COMMENTS (3)
Actually Eduwonkette is a bit disengunous--he doesn't provide data and its unclear if the increase in the gap is statistically significant. If i's not significant, then there isn't that much here. It's difficult to know if 5 or 6 years is long enough to see trends from whatever Duncan has done.
I would be skeptical of rapid changes in test scores, because meaningful reform (e.g., improving the quality of principals and other administraion, adopting effective curiculla, retiring bad teachers and hiring/keeping teachers who are effective) takes years to implement. If there were significant short-term changes, I'd assume that there was some cheating going on, which is pretty common, with teachers basically teaching kids to take the tests. A meaningful step would be for journalists to appreciate the complexity of changing a school system and the time it takes for statistically significant changes to occur and the reason that a ststistically significant change is more meaningful than just any change at all.
Posted by: Rich | December 16, 2008 2:41 PM
FREE Infinite On-Demand TV Shows, Movies, Music(millions and millions of digital quality tracks), Unlimited Games, Money, and FREE College Educations (Stanford, Oxford, Notre Dame and more) @ InternetSurfShack.com
Posted by: G | December 16, 2008 3:28 PM
the real issue isn't the achievement gap -- there aren't all that many white or middle class kids left in the chicago school system -- its low achievement over all and lack of progress over the duncan years.
chicago's NAEP scores are low even by big city standards, only 8 percent of its freshmen make it through college. pretty ugly numbers. not much improvement.
check it all out here:
http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2008/12/chicago-the-dun.html
Posted by: alexander | December 18, 2008 9:21 AM