Ed Week: Drop in U.S. NAEP Math, Reading Scores Prompts Blame Game .. .... (Serious CYA game begins)

Drop in U.S. Math, Reading Scores Prompts Blame Game

Blame Laid on Economy, Demography, Standards  

With U.S. students' math and reading scores showing statistically significant declines on a national test for the first time in more than two decades, advocates on all sides have begun pointing fingers. It is the CYA game that is really beginning.

....  U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a separate media call about the results that this sort of "implementation dip" is fairly common. He pointed to Massachusetts, which saw a temporary drop in test scores in the early 2000s after changing its standards. "This is the ultimate long-term play," he said.

Arne Duncan is leaving this crap shooting soon but the nation's children are stuck with it.

But Brookings' Loveless dismissed the idea of a post-implementation drop being the norm. "I don't buy it," he said. "If that whole theory is right, we should have seen it two years ago," when the common standards were also being implemented.

About Duncan's dip claim based on Massachusetts,  Ze'ev Wurman writes HERE. =>   " It is also interesting to note that Secretary Duncan pointed to Massachusetts, that supposedly saw a drop in test scores after raising standards two decades ago before becoming a consistently high-achieving state, as his way of “excusing” the NAEP drop. It seems Duncan attempts to rewrite history. Massachusetts suffered a significant decline only in fourth grade reading once in 2003 … truly a “blip.” Otherwise it continued its impressive climb to the top of the states … until losing ground since 2011 in all four NAEP indicators. That certainly is not even close to past Massachusetts’ record, despite what Mr. Duncan would have us believe."

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Meanwhile, Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, wrote initially that the economy would be to blame if NAEP scores dropped but revoked that interpretation after digging into the state data. Instead, he asked onlookers to be patient, "to wait for more sophisticated analyses to emerge, and to wait until 2017 to see if these numbers are a one-time blip or the beginning of a disturbing trend."

Really Mr. Petrilli wait two years until 2017. So when grade 3 students are in grade 5, then we can think about changes.  You must be kidding.  Right?