In a new report, the National Center for Education Statistics compared state testing standards with federal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) standards between 2005 and 2007.
North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction gets schooled by the Associated Press article about the new report.
North Carolina state education official Lou Fabrizio said states face a dilemma because of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 federal law that prods schools to boost test scores to meet annual improvement goals.
States can set easier standards that ensure schools will meet the federally mandated goals, or they can set more challenging standards that help kids improve.
His state chose the latter, but Fabrizio said it was tough to explain that higher standards meant lower scores.
“That was a really difficult job for us to do and communicate to the public that students did not all of a sudden become very ignorant,” he said.
North Carolina still has below-basic achievement standards for fourth- and eighth-grade reading.
South Carolina still has some of the highest state testing standards in the nation.
