Editor’s Note: Recently, six well-known AIR thought leaders including George Bohrnstedt, Beatrice Birman, David Osher, Jennifer O’Day, Terry Salinger, and Jane Hannaway posted blogs on the AIR website about A Nation at Risk. Gary Phillips, AIR Vice President and AIR Institute Fellow, joins these thinkers with his blog, “Why Local Educators Haven’t Heeded the Warnings in A Nation at Risk,” which we’ve reposted below.
For the last 30 years national education leaders have believed that our underachieving educational system has put our nation at risk. One persistent problem with that belief is that the international data examined by national policy makers to support the claim don’t match the state data reported to the local press and parents. International assessments generally show that the United States is, at best, in the middle of the pack among other industrialized nations while state data generally show that students are proficient and performing above average. No wonder the crisis experienced by policy makers doesn’t seem so urgent to local governors, boards of education, and parents. And no wonder local educators haven’t acted on what national policy makers consider crises.
A graph helps illustrate the problem. The beige bars represent the state performance in 2007 based on the data reported by states to the federal government under the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind. Look at Tennessee, for example. In 2007, the state reported that 90 percent of its 4th graders were proficient in mathematics based on challenging performance standards established by the state.
What percentage would be proficient if Tennessee had taken an international test such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)? And what would happen if Tennessee used a common and internationally competitive performance standard, such as TIMSS’ High standard, to report the rate of proficiency? See the blue bars on the chart for the results. Now only 29 percent of Tennessee’s students appear proficient. From an international point of view, Tennessee has 29 percent of its Grade 4 students proficient in mathematics. However, from a state point of view, 90 percent of its Grade 4 students are proficient in mathematics.
The discrepancy between these two metrics stems from a flawed data system. Our federal government, which sponsors international studies, uses a different metric than the state government, which develops its own test. The different metrics report different results. It’s like a doctor having two thermometers calibrated in different ways—one national thermometer and one state thermometer. The national thermometer says the patient is running a fever and needs treatment while the state thermometer is saying the child’s temperature is just fine.
It’s difficult for the messages of A Nation at Risk to penetrate to the local level where actual educational change must take place. Until we develop a common metric that measures student performance based on internationally competitive standards, we will continue to see alarming national reports shelved in local schools.
This post was written by Gary W. Phillips, a vice president and Institute Fellow at AIR whose research advances the state-of-the-art in statistical and psychometric techniques. Dr. Phillips received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky with joint training from the college of education and department of statistics. This post has been reposted from American Institutes for Research.