The Choice Channel

“The release this week of national test scores in reading and math was an embarrassment for the state Department of Education. Scores nationally and in many individual states showed modest gains from 2005 to 2007, but New York did not - even though the Education Department had trumpeted ‘gains’ on its tests just weeks earlier. The federally sponsored National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is known in the education world as the gold standard of testing. In 2002, Congress authorized NAEP testing in every state to serve as a check of the states’ own claims about their progress. (Congress rightly worried that individual states would dumb-down tests that they themselves develop and administer.)” (09/28/07)