CBS News: Soaring Test Scores

CBS News "Political Animal" reacts to CEP report:

An even better question is: even if state test scores are rising, does that indicate that student achievement is also increasing? Bob Somerby suspects that rising scores might actually be due to dumbed down tests, and unfortunately, the study itself suggests he's right.

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However, there are virtually no states that improved on NAEP but fell on their own tests. A rising NAEP score really does seem to indicate better performance that shows up no matter what test you take. Conversely, there are loads of states that showed improvement on their own test even though results fell on NAEP. Peculiar, no? It's almost as though the states tests aren't really testing actual performance very well.