You’re about to get mislead with NAEP Reading data

I wrote back in May and earlier about the recent release of the Trial Urban District Assessment results for 2009 from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Jefferson County took part in this for the first time in 2009.

At that time, I cautioned that Jefferson County schools cannot be fairly compared to typical inner city school systems in this country because the student demographics in Jefferson County are not close to similar to real inner city school districts.

I used this graph to help make that point (click on graph to enlarge).

It shows that the racial makeup of Jefferson County is nothing like that in other urban school districts that took part in the NAEP Trial Urban District Assessments.

Now, the National Center for Education Statistics has released one-page “Snapshots” of the results from the reading assessment. As soon as I heard about them, I suspected these snapshots would be simplistic summaries that would totally ignore the serious problem of demographics.

I was right. The Snapshots are incomplete and can be misleading.

To learn more, click the “Read more” link below

Sadly, this typical “Snapshot” for grade 8 reading for Jefferson County

(click to enlarge), contains not a clue that Jefferson County’s 56 percent white demographic in the eighth grade is far larger than the inner city white percentage of 22 percent. Because whites strongly outscore other groups on NAEP, when more whites are present, they pull the overall average scores upward.

Note that while racial breakdowns for Jefferson County are presented on the snapshot, they are not provided for the inner city or national average groups. That hides the fact contained in the NAEP Trial Urban District Reading Report Card that while eighth grade whites in Jefferson County scored 34 percent proficient in reading, the average score for eight grade whites in large cities across the country was considerably higher at 42 percent. Even blacks in Jefferson County don’t do much better than blacks in large cities in the country, scoring 13 percent proficient in reading compared to the nationwide big city average for eighth grade blacks of 11 percent.

The bottom line is the NAEP Snapshots are incomplete and can be seriously misleading. Coming from the National Center for Education Statistics, that is a real disappointment.

You can bet that Jefferson County Public Schools will rush to use this misleading data to make all sorts of claims about performance that just won’t be so.

Don’t be misled.

Without change there is no change. It’s business as usual in Washington, where the Obama administration is using raw power to push support to unions at every opportunity and in every way possible.

However, there is a limit on what people can pay to support such political nonsense.

In Kentucky, our leaders are on a spending binge and much of it is to satisfy, or at least pacify, the politically influential labor unions. But considering our economy has tanked, how long can Kentucky’s policymakers keep their heads in the sand? Even the United Auto Workers can no longer remain in denial:

Per the Detroit News:

- THE PAST: Union members received a slight wage premium over counterparts at Toyota in Kentucky or Honda in Ohio. Their benefits were better, their pensions richer and all of it contributed to the financial stranglehold on Detroit’s automakers.

- REALITY NOW: New hires will be paid roughly half what the veterans now get. Defined-benefit pensions will be replaced with defined-contribution 401(k) plans. Active members pay more for their health care, and so do the legions of retirees.

“The best contract in the world doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have a job,” said Ron Gettelfinger, UAW’s president who led during these tough conversions.

Leaders in Washington and Frankfort can’t correlate that support to what happened in Detroit. They can only encourage and promise the “way it used to be.” It’s pure nonsense.

Kentucky’s going to have to make some tough conversions, too, involving crucial issues: prevailing wage, ability to place teachers where they can make the biggest impact, out of control state worker defined benefit pension and insurance costs and a bloated state government.

When the federal government can’t print enough money to subsidize Kentucky’s spending binge or bonding capacity peaks and more taxes just kill jobs, “the way it used to be” just won’t be good enough anymore.

A reasonable assumption is that a slowdown in the nation’s economy would also slow the growth of government employment — especially with the nearly double-digit national jobless rate and the even-higher 10.4 percent unemployment rate in Kentucky.

But “government” and “reasonable” offer the epitome of an oxymoron these days.

So not only are individuals losing their source of income for their families, taxpayers are being forced to shell out even more to ensure the continuation of a government whose policies have greatly contributed to our nation’s current financial funk.

Of course, more workers are needed to effectively carry out the barrage of new taxes, regulations and government mandates headed our way.

No, it’s not about the kids; it’s about adults in the system.

A Detroit News blog exposes the problem very nicely.

Furthermore, the blogger points out an outstanding example of how privatizing custodial services saved a Michigan school district big money as expenses dropped from $17–20 per hour to $9-10 per hour. Instead of the district’s schools being cleaned only every other day, they now get daily cleaning. In addition, the district will save $5 million over the next five years.

Somehow, the Michigan Education Association even tried to make this out as something bad for schools.

Labor unions covet government edicts that will reverse the trend of falling union membership and declining dues.

Click here to read the latest Bluegrass Beacon.

It looks like summer is already heating up for the college bound.

Fox News says that a new report from The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is creating lots of discussion about the books incoming college freshmen have been asked to read before reporting to the campus this fall.

The NAS study says:

“We found the preponderance of reading assignments promotes liberal social causes and liberal sensibilities. Of the 180 books, 126 (70 percent) either explicitly promote a liberal political agenda or advance a liberal interpretation of events. By contrast, the study identifies only three books (less than 2 percent) that promote a conservative sensibility and none that promote conservative political causes. 51 books (28 percent) are neither liberal nor conservative.”

Right or wrong, those are fighting words. So, it will be interesting to see how this early “summer heat” situation plays out as more becomes known about the books and the reactions of those fledgling college students to their reading assignments.

By the way, three Kentucky schools are listed in the study. Click the Read More link below to learn about the books they want incoming freshmen to read.

The three Kentucky schools on the NAS list include the following:

Northern Kentucky University tells its students to read “This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women.” Per the NAS, the book has a New Age/Spiritual/Philosophy focus.

Eastern Kentucky University’s incoming students are asked to read “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.” The NAS claims this book has a Holocaust/Genocide/War focus and an African theme.

Students inbound to UK are asked to take “Zeitoun” under their belts before arrival. This one has a general Multiculturalism/Immigration/Racism theme along with a focus on Hurricane Katrina.

If you have read these books, I’d appreciate your comments. Do you agree or disagree with the NAS characterizations?

Here’s some background on the NAS. Its web site claims the organization:

“…is an independent membership association of academics working to foster intellectual freedom and to sustain the tradition of reasoned scholarship and civil debate in America’s colleges and universities.”

The group says of itself:

“The founders of NAS summoned faculty members from across the political spectrum to help defend the core values of liberal education.

The NAS today is higher education’s most vigilant watchdog. We stand for intellectual integrity in the curriculum, in the classroom, and across the campus—and we respond when colleges and universities fall short of the mark.”

Fox News says critics portray the organization as “Right Wing.” However, it will be the books themselves that ultimately determine if the NAS, or the people who select college reading lists, are out of touch.

Kudos to Democrats Jim Wayne of Louisville and Melvin Henley of Murray for returning to the state treasury more than $2,500 in wages they received for this year’s special legislative session.

In the private sector, if work doesn’t get done on time there are consequences. In the public sector, Frankfort’s politicians too often benefit from a policy of procrastination.

How many other lawmakers will follow Wayne’s and Henley’s example? Taxpayers are watching.

In my latest Lexington Herald-Leader op-ed, which was published Monday, I challenge faulty research about charter schools and Kentucky’s teachers union that uses it to deny Kentucky parents the option of sending their children to charter schools.

Five years ago today, the Supreme Court ruled in its Kelo decision that government could seize private property through eminent domain and hand it off to another private entity for their own gain and that of elected politicians.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSxru-qxuL4]

To anyone who knows anything about education, it’s a stunning comment. Education Commissioner Terry Holliday said in Bowling Green that:

“Teachers don’t know how to develop good assessments. And the huge thing is that they don’t know what to do with the information to change instruction.”

Wow!

When the US Air Force checked me out in 1971 to program the first generation of teaching technology machines ever used for operational pilot training, one of the first things I learned was the vital importance of assessment in real education. Very simply, good teachers must constantly evaluate where the student is in the learning process so that future teaching can be adjusted to meet the student’s needs.

Without continuous assessment of student progress, teachers are left clueless about how their instruction is working for students.

So, here we are after 20 years of KERA, and our commissioner of education says our teachers don’t know some of the most important things about teaching. That is indeed a “huge thing.”