Ah, report cards. Displayed on the refrigerator when it's filled with good grades, hidden from your parents as long as possible when bad grades prevail. But unlike those report cards that can conveniently get misplaced, there's no hiding from our Nation's Report Card.

Released earlier this week by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test, commonly known as the Nation's Report Card, is the yardstick used to measure learning in each state across the country. It measures what America's students know and can do in various subject areas.

 

Nationally, the test results show that we're making progress in closing the achievement gap (hooray!), and overall, states are doing better. Small improvements, but improvements nonetheless. (Although see this Seattle PI article for more specifics on Washington's miniority students).

 

For Washington students, scores remained steady since our last report card in 2005. Out of a possible score of 500, our fourth-graders scored 224 in reading, and 243 in math. Our eighth-graders scored 265 in reading and 285 in math. All scores are above the fourth- and eighth-grade national averages of 220 in reading and 239 in math, and 261 in reading and 280 in math, respectively.

 

Good news in terms of a state-by-state comparison. But what about how it compares to our WASL scores? You'd think that since both tests are meant to measure student proficiency that the results would be similar.

 

Not quite.

 

Like most states, Washington does worse on NAEP than they do on the WASL. As this article notes, The No Child Left Behind law requires states to participate in NAEP but in a nod to states' rights, states are allowed to use their own tests (ours being the WASL) in meeting the law's central mandate - that schools increase the percentage of students demonstrating proficiency each year. The law requires 100 percent of the nation's students to reach proficiency - as each state defines it - by 2014.

 

For example, according to NAEP, 44% of Washington's 4th-graders performed at or above the proficiency level in math, while 36% are at or above proficiency in reading. But looking at this year's WASL report card, 57.9% met proficiency in math and 76.4% met proficiency in reading. Uh, something's not right here.

 

So what does it mean?

 

Some argue it means state tests are easier because states that fail to raise scores over time face serious sanctions. Others argue that the federal test gives policy makers a snapshot of student performance across the nation, while state tests provide data about individual performance so it's unfair to compare results.

 

Either way, what it does show is the Washington's standards aren't too high or unreasonable. In fact, they might even need to be increased at some point to align to national standards.

 

We hide bad grades from our folks because we know that there's likely a consequence for our poor performance. That's actually a good thing. It's that accountability that drives us to do better. To improve and work harder. So that one day, we can proudly hang our report card on our nation's fridge.