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| Washington: Education Secretary Margaret Spellings makes remarks during a ceremony renaming the Education Department building
in honor of former President Lyndon Johnson on September 17. Lawrence Jackson/AP |
US students score sweeping gains on tests
Elementary and middle-school students are making significant improvements in math skills, while their gains in reading are more modest, according to national test results.
from the September 26, 2007 edition
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Many Democrats worry that testing has gone too far and is putting too much pressure on teachers, who are among the most reliable party activists.
Many conservative Republicans say Washington doesn't belong in local schools and the law should be radically changed or phased out.
For the first time, most Americans now have an unfavorable view of the law, according to the 2007 PDK/Gallup Poll released this month. Nearly half of those surveyed say they would blame the law if large numbers of schools fail to meet the requirements, rather than blame the school.
"The basic political dynamic is this: Good news is not going to change the minds of those who oppose the law. This is not an empirical fight; it's an ideological fight. But bad news would have put some wind in the sails of the critics," says Andrew Rotherham, a former education adviser to President Clinton and codirector of Education Sector, an education policy think tank.
A closely watched result in the NAEP test is the number of students still performing below basic levels. The biggest gains this year are among fourth graders, but more than 70 percent of eighth-graders now test at or above basic levels. Eighth-grade reading skills, however, have been flat.
"The good news is that there's continued increases in math and reading scores in general, except for eighth-grade reading," says Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the Center on Education Policy in Washington, which has conducted the most systematic and long-range studies of NCLB. "The data show that we can get substantial increases in elementary school achievement, but these increases are being lost in middle school and certainly high school."
With this week's NAEP scores, "we can claim partial victory, but we need to get on to the harder problems," Mr. Jennings says.
"This report will be used by the Bush administration to say the law ought to be renewed as it is, but the critics will find some grounds to say the law must be substantially changed, and both sides may be right," he adds.
Moves to reform the 2002 NCLB are furthest along in the House, where the Education and Labor Committee is reworking draft legislation that shifts emphasis from standardized testing by allowing schools to use other measures to demonstrate adequate yearly progress.
"For members of Congress who are under a lot of pressure to scrap the law or dramatically overhaul it, the NAEP results will give them some cover to make changes in the law, but to keep it in a recognizable form," says Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
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