Progressive U: The NAEP Dilemma

interesting blog post from a recently graduated high school senior responding to the 12th grade HSTS results.

The NAEP (Nation's Report Card) Dilemma
mleliza's picture
Submitted by mleliza on Fri, 02/23/2007 - 4:34pm.
Tags: News and politics | Society | Media | Opinion | Education | Humor | Broad prosperity | Shared responsibility | Better future

This morning I read a report in the newspaper claiming that there's a bit of confusion as to why high school students today possess higher GPA's, but are lacking higher scores in the math and reading portions of the NAEP test they were given. Upon completing the article, my first verbal reaction contained the phrase: "Gee, I think I may know why...."

Last year I was one of several students from my high school chosen to take some type of obscure test that possibly had something to do with a national survey. I, nor any of my classmates apparently, weren't exactly well-informed about the purpose of this seemingly time-consuming test, but the largest aspect of it was that we wouldn't be penalized if we didn't do well. *Key phrase: We wouldn't be penalized if we didn't do well.* Here's a bit of background information about how the whole thing was set up at my high school: most of the students selected for the study were the ones who took a good number of advanced-level courses (one can imagine how some students were extremely irked at having to miss out on a class covering AP material.) We were assigned into cramped classrooms, and the instructions were read by a kind elderly woman speaking with a low drawl that seemed incapable of producing coherent sound-waves. We were given the test packet, and off we started.

I really don't believe enough emphasis was put on the significance of the test we were asked to take. My classmates and I were obviously oblivious as to the importance of it. If we knew that our scores would be calculated for a national statistic I'm pretty sure we would have been less excited about the free pencils, and possibly more motivated to actually completely read each question before carelessly diving into the multiple-choice columns. I don't think people even read the writing on the free pencils (I admit I didn't until the test was over), which actually gives a web address with the line "nationsreportcard" embedded somewhere in there. Anyway, before this post gets extremely verbose, I would like to think that most of the high school students elsewhere were better informed. If they weren't, then perhaps this may have been a factor with the little dilemma I read about in the paper this morning.

On the bright side, I still have my free pencil. I'm glad I made the wise choice of not using it while taking any SATs or ACTs in the past year.