Nobody Wants to Be Responsible for Dismal K-12 Test Scores
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/florida-standardized-tests.html
Florida would join Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Alaska in lowering their testing standards or graduation requirements of late. After the absolutely dismal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores from 2024, which showed that a higher percentage of eighth graders scored “below basic” in reading than at any point in the test’s 30-year history, you would think that states’ education leaders would be putting serious time and effort into helping their students thrive. The NAEP is a congressionally-mandated federal exam given to fourth graders and eighth graders every two years and 12th graders about every four years to track educational progress across the country.
All of this is reminding me of something President Trump famously said in the spring of 2020 about coronavirus, “‘If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.” If we stop testing America’s students, we’ll have fewer bad headlines about how poorly they’re doing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/florida-standardized-tests.html
Florida would join Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Alaska in lowering their testing standards or graduation requirements of late. After the absolutely dismal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores from 2024, which showed that a higher percentage of eighth graders scored “below basic” in reading than at any point in the test’s 30-year history, you would think that states’ education leaders would be putting serious time and effort into helping their students thrive. The NAEP is a congressionally-mandated federal exam given to fourth graders and eighth graders every two years and 12th graders about every four years to track educational progress across the country.
All of this is reminding me of something President Trump famously said in the spring of 2020 about coronavirus, “‘If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.” If we stop testing America’s students, we’ll have fewer bad headlines about how poorly they’re doing.