Two weeks ago the National Assessment Governing Board, which runs the tests known as NAEP, our “national report card” (considered the most accurate reflection of  student proficiency), announced  it will start publishing more results for 12th graders and adding civics portions for eighth and twelfth graders.*

As more attention is paid to college students’ lack of preparation for higher level coursework (almost half of all full-time NJ college students have to take remedial classes for content they should have learned in high school) we need more information about how to better ready our students for success, whether they go to college or not. And as Karen Vaites notes, adding civics is really important because  “schools have been spending less and less time on social studies and geography, especially in the elementary grades, and the Civics push can reinforce the critical role of content area study.”

One catch: States have to opt in to the additional tests.

So, once again, just like the federal tax credit program, the Sherrill Administration is faced with the choice to opt in or to opt out from the new testing. Sure, it’s easy to dismiss this opportunity for more accurate public information because, well, Trump. But isn’t that short-sighted? 

Right now most parents rely on report card grades to gauge their children’s academic progress. But those grades are grossly inflated. Sure, we have the state standardized assessments which test all students in grades 3-8 in math and reading, science in grades 5, 8, and 11,  plus a “graduation readiness” test in high school. Yet over time, in NJ and elsewhere, states have lowered the score needed to be deemed proficient. For example, three years ago the NJ State Board of Education agreed, after a full court press by the DOE (it was a close vote! 6-5) to lower the cut scores on the graduation test because the small number of students who met expectations in 10th grade English and Algebra 1 was embarrassingly low.

This should be an an easy one for Governor Sherrill, not nearly as loaded as her yet-to-be-announced decision on whether to opt into  money from the Trump Administration’s Federal Scholarship Tax Credit, which allows taxpayers to get a dollar-for-dollar credit up to $1,700 on their federal taxes if they donate money to an eligible scholarship-granting organization. (Regulations still haven’t been released but it looks promising enough — and nonthreatening to traditional schools, which would lose 0 dollars— that New York Governor Kathy Hochul just opted in. An informal poll by Alina Adams finds New Yorkers approve of this decision by a 3-1 margin. Go for it, Gov. Sherrill! You’re in good company!) 

If information is power, in the realm of public education New Jersey families are 99 pound weaklings. Report card grades are nonrepresentative of student learning, state proficiency rates are skewed upward, we get the scores later than almost any other state in the union, rendering them practically obsolete, and everyone gets a diploma. Opting into a small expansion of  NAEP testing won’t fix these NJ-specific problems but it will give us a little more information about how we can improve our richly-funded and outcome-deficient state education system. Why would we say no?

*Danyela Souza Egorov says “This thoughtful decision by the board can put to rest concerns that the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education would hurt the NAEP.” I hope she’s right, although I’m not ready to stop worrying.

**As reported by NJER, when the passing score was set at 750 for the high school graduation test (defined as “meets expectations”),  only 39% of test takers passed the English language arts portion, while 50% passed math. The DOE argued that if the passing score had been lowered to 725 last spring (“partially meets expectations”), 57% of students would have passed math while 81% would have passed English language arts. So that’s what we go with. Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz, then head of the Senate Education Committee, said 725 “makes me cringe” because it sets such low expectations for student proficiency.