Category Archives: education reform

Education, education reform, NAEP, reading, reading proficiency, Science of Reading

Three Questions about the Mississippi Reading “Miracle” [Updated December 2025]

[Header Photo by USGS on Unsplash]

Update [December 2025]

Here I want to note that Q1 and Q3 have been answered, and the answer is exactly what I have been suggesting.

First, let me recommend How much of “Mississippi’s education miracle” is an artifact of selection bias?, which examines the analysis answering two of the questions below: On education miracles in general (and those in Mississippi in particular), Howard Wainer, Irina Grabovsky and Daniel H. Robinson.

Here are the highlights, although I recommend reading the entire piece:

In 1748, famed Scot David Hume defined nature. He elaborated such a law as “a regularity of past experience projected by the mind to future cases”. He argued that the evidence for a miracle is rarely sufficient to suspend rational belief because a closer look has always revealed that what was reported as a miracle was more likely false, resulting from misperception, mistransmission, or deception….

A careful examination confirms that enthusiasm to emulate Mississippi should be tempered with scepticism….

This provides a boost of about $111.63 of extra funding annually for each pupil. Comparing this amount to what are annual contemporary per pupil expenditures nationally, we have to agree that if such small expenditures can make a visible difference in student performance it truly is a miracle – a Mississippi version of St. John’s loaves and fishes.

But it was the second component of the Mississippi Miracle, a new retention policy, perhaps inspired by New Orleans’ Katrina disaster a decade earlier, that is likely to be the key to their success….

Prior to 2013, a higher percentage of third-graders moved on to the fourth grade and took the NAEP fourth-grade reading test. After 2013, only those students who did well enough in reading moved on to the fourth grade and took the test.

It is a fact of arithmetic that the mean score of any data set always increases if you delete some of the lowest scores (what is technically called “left truncation of the score distribution”)….

Strangely though, for the eighth-grade literacy test, the state’s rank dropped to a tie for 42nd place!…

(Note that this works especially well for student height, for after retaining the shortest third-graders for an extra year they will likely be taller when they are measured again a year later. It would be nice if the same were true for students struggling in academic subjects.)…

Were we to do this we would find that most of Mississippi’s gains are due to the retention rate.

It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the lion’s share of the effects of the “Mississippi miracle” are yet another case of gaming the system. There is no miracle to behold. There is nothing special in Mississippi’s literacy reform model that should be replicated globally. It just emphasises the obvious advice that, if you want your students to get high scores, don’t allow those students who are likely to get low scores to take the test. This message is not a secret….

 Find a way to prevent the lowest test scorers from taking the exam and the average score will increase….

Second, besides weak empirical data, educational reformers like Patrinos should have given greater weight to the extant literature on the Mississippi Miracle. The miracle had already been convincingly debunked.10 Fourth-grade gains had vanished by the time the students reached eighth grade.

Question 1: Why is Mississippi retaining about 9000-12,000 K-3 students annually since 2014?

One of the key assertions of the “science of reading” (SOR) movement is that students across the US are mostly not proficient readers because teachers rely on balanced literacy to teach reading.

And then, SOR advocates argue that 95% of students can be proficient readers, and the key to that success is SOR.

That raises an important question about Mississippi, which has implemented both SOR reading policy and grade retention for over a decade.

SOR advocates have called MS’s jump in grade 4 NAEP scores a “miracle”; however, MS has continued to retain about 9000-12,000 students annually in K-3.

Certainly, a decade is enough time to reach the 95% rate of proficiency, and thus, retention numbers should have dropped dramatically or be near 0.

Question 2: How is Mississippi a “miracle” if the achievement gap for race and socioeconomic status is the same as 1998?

As shown in MS’s 2024 NAEP reading scores for grade 4:

Question 3: Why has Mississippi’s grade 8 NAEP scores remained in the bottom 25% of states despite the grade 4 NAEP scores jumping into the top 25%?

For 2024, MS NAEP grade 8 reading scores drop to eleventh from the bottom of state scores:

An analysis of reading reform found that states with comprehensive reform that includes grade retention have experienced short-term increases in test scores.

However, the analysis does not identify why these comprehensive reforms (including grade retention) are correlated with those short-term scores increases.

Research on education “miracles” have found that virtually none exist, and even when a school or program appears to be “high flying” there is little evidence those can be scaled up meaningfully.

Mississippi’s grade 4 NAEP scores in reading, then, raise questions that must be answered; instead, it is now politically cool to adopt copy-cat legislation from the state without proper evidence that there is valid success or a solid understanding of what is happening and why.

Recommended

Big Lies of Education: Grade Retention

Education, education reform, Educational Research, Science of Reading

The “Science of” Movements: Another Education Reform Red Herring

[Header image misocrazy from New York, NY, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

“Red herring” perfectly describes the bulk of education reform in the US since the Reagan administration because thosee reforms have been based on false claims to distract from needed social and educational reform in the interests of students, teachers, and public education.

The US (and many English-speaking nations around the world) have remained in a perpetual state of education and reading crises for decades.

The US has never stopped using crisis rhetoric or blaming schools, teachers, and students, but policy has been a revolving door of new standards, new tests, and new “miracle” solutions—none of which ever produce the positive outcomes promised.

The dirty little secret is that perpetual crisis/reform in education (and reading) is its own goal because constant crisis/reform is politically and economically profitable to those fanning the flames of crisis.

In 2018, the “science of reading” (SOR) became a tired and constant refrain of the media, spreading to parent advocacy and then legislation and policy.

By 2025, the “science of” has added “math” and “learning,” including many English-speaking countries where a reading crisis is the norm.

And thus, education reform in the US and other countries has now adopted at the core of education reform “science of” rhetoric, claims, blame, and policy.

Parallel to education reform since the 1980s, the “science of” education reform is not grounded in credible claims about education crisis or problems, and therefore, the blame and solutions are also not credible or effective.

The “science of” approach to education reform has been extremely effective since “science” is being weaponized, and when anyone dare to challenge the movement, those people are accused of being anti-science, often compared to the anti-vaccination movement.

Here’s the problem: Those of us challenging the “science of” movement are not rejecting scientific research in education; we are acknowledging that “science of” advocacy is misrepresenting educational challenges, educational research, and educational practice for ideological, political, and market purposes.

Journalists, educators/scholars, education “celebrities,” the education marketplace, and politicians have made their careers on false “science of” claims and unfounded attacks on anyone calling them out for not being credible.

Ironically, the evidence supports those of us who are critics of “science of” education/reading reform, and consequently, “science of” claims are red herrings, distractions from the valid education challenges and potential reforms that would serve the interests of students, teachers, and public education.

Here, then, is the core evidence that the “science of” movements are, in fact, red herring education reform.

Is there an education or reading crisis? No.

Elena Aydorova; Reinking, Hruby, and Risko; and Larsen, as just a few examples, have explained that the data/evidence simply does not support claims of crisis.

Further, “science of” advocates tend to move quickly from the false claims of “crisis” to offering false blame.

Just as there is no evidence of crisis, there is simply no scientific studies showing, for example, that the US has a reading crisis caused by a few reading programs, the implementation of balanced literacy, or the failure of teacher education to prepare teachers.

Again, there is a paradox in the “science of” movement whereby the advocates of “science of” themselves do not adhere to the narrow use of “science” to support their major claims.

For example, in the US, SOR advocates and SOR-based policy and legislation include support for a number of practices, claims, and programs that lack scientific evidence—decodable texts, LETRS, 95% rule, Orton-Gillingham, systematic phonics first for all students, nonsense word assessments (DIBLES), etc.

Broadly, also, “science of” advocates’ most damning red herring is that they are weaponizing “science” as a veneer to take a non-ideological pose although “science of” advocates are themselves mostly making ideological claims.

Direct instruction and skills-based instruction have long been at the core of conservative ideology.

Once we acknowledge that “science of” claims of crisis and who/what they blame are not evidence-based, we can also acknowledge they are mostly making ideological arguments, and then, we must unpack why.

Noted above, there is a great deal of profit in crying education/reading crisis and maintaining a constant state of reform.

As long as that reform never works.

And it never has, it never will.

The “science of” movements, then, are grounded in misinformation, oversimplification, and ideological bias.

The “science of” movements are another form of red herring education reform.

The distraction is also ideological, grounded in a rejection of the power of systemic forces and a belief in rugged individualism as well as the bootstrapping myth.

The “science of” movement is also a distraction from other ulterior motives, such as de-professionalizing teachers with scripted curriculum and imposing AI/computer program approaches for teaching students.

More irony: Education reform is designed to keep our eyes on individual people—students, teachers—and not the overwhelming evidence:

Almost 63% of the variance in test performance was explained by social capital family income variables that influence the development of background knowledge. Background knowledge is a known predictor of standardized test results. Family income variables are immutable by schools. Only public policies, outside the control of school personnel, can influence family income….

Policy makers and education leaders should rethink the current reliance on standardized test results as the deciding factor to make decisions about student achievement, teacher quality, school effectiveness, and school leader quality. In effect, policies that use standardized test results to evaluate, reward, and sanction students and school personnel are doing nothing more than rewarding schools that serve advantaged students and punishing schools that serve disadvantaged students. (Maroun and Tienken, 2024)

Here is the science that critics of the “science of” movement recognize.

And fun fact, we are not trying to sell you anything or get your vote.

Don’t be distracted.

Recommended

Aukerman, M. (2022a). The Science of Reading and the media: Does the media draw on high-quality reading research? Literacy Research Association Critical Conversations. CC BY 4.0 license. https://literacyresearchassociation.org/stories/the-science-of-reading-and-the-media-does-the-media-draw-on-high-quality-reading-research/

Aukerman, M. (2022b). The Science of Reading and the media: How do current reporting patterns cause damage? Literacy Research Association Critical Conversations. CC BY 4.0 license. https://literacyresearchassociation.org/stories/the-science-of-reading-and-the-media-how-do-current-reporting-patterns-cause-damage/

Aukerman, M. (2022c). The Science of Reading and the media: Is reporting biased? Literacy Research Association Critical Conversations. CC BY 4.0 license. https://literacyresearchassociation.org/stories/the-science-of-reading-and-the-media-is-reporting-biased/

Aydarova, E. (2023). “Whatever you want to call it”: Science of reading mythologies in the education reform movement. Harvard Educational Review, 93(4), 556–581, https://doi.org10.17763/1943-5045-93.4.556

Aydarova, E. (2024). What you see is not what you get: Science of reading reforms as a guise for standardization, centralization, and privatization. American Journal of Education. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/730991

Reinking, D., Hruby, G.G., & Risko, V.J. (2023). Legislating phonics: Settle science of political polemic? Teachers College Record. https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681231155688

Thomas, P.L. (2025). Navigating (another) reading crisis as an administrator: Rethinking the “science of reading” movement. Journal of School Administration, Research and Development, 10(1), 38-48. https://ojed.org/JSARD/article/view/6706

Thomas, P.L. (2024, November). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: For all ELA teachers, “the time is always now.” English Journal, 114(2), 21-26. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024114221

Thomas, P.L. (2024, September). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: The media continue to misread teaching reading and literacy. English Journal, 114(1), 14-19. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024114114

Thomas, P.L. (2024, May). Teaching English in the “science of reading” era: We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: Selling a story of reading. English Journal, 113(5), 16-22. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024113516 [Open Access https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej202411342]

Thomas, P.L. (2024, March). We teach English in times of perpetual crisis: The long (and tedious) history of reading crisis. English Journal, 113(4), 21-26. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/ej2024113421

Tierney, R.J., & Pearson, P.D. (2024). Fact-checking the Science of Reading: Opening up the conversation. Literacy Research Commons. https://literacyresearchcommons.org

Education, education reform, Educational Research, Science of Reading

Who Controls Science Controls: “we all need to conform to the science”

[Header Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash]

While there is ample and disturbing evidence to keep our focus on the tremendous destructive outcomes of the second Trump administration, we should also recognize that the seeds of these worst policies for education were planted by George W. Bush as both governor of Texas and president of the US.

The recent release of the government report with fake citations (likely from using AI) is just one of the most chilling examples of the cumulative effect of government control of what counts as “science,” and thus, Why Trump’s push for ‘gold-standard science’ has researchers alarmed.

So, first, we must note that Bush education agenda in Texas included scripted curriculum, and then, more significantly, Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was grounded in mandating “scientifically based” instruction and programs.

Ironically, despite NCLB’s “scientifically based” mandate, in the second decade after implementation, the media, politicians, and pundits declared a reading crisis and ascribed the cause to teacher education and teachers failing to know and use the “science of reading” (SOR).

SOR has, then, spawned the “science of math” and more broadly the “science of learning.”

Similar to the bi-partisan support for NCLB and most education reform since the 1980s, a politically diverse coalition has embraced and endorsed the “science of” movement, although few people have acknowledged that the agenda is mostly conservative ideology.

Some are, however, starting to recognize that “science of” policies are working to de-professionalize teachers through mandating scripted curriculum.

Rachael Jefferson confronts this reality:

There is not enough evidence behind the science of learning to justify it being enshrined in our education system, Jefferson contends. 

“It posits science really as an absolute, and it also suggests explicitly that nobody can question its authority because it is the ‘science’ of learning.

“In other words, ‘whatever [teachers have] been doing for the last few decades is unimportant now, we all need to conform to the science’.

“That’s a very heavy-handed way of approaching pedagogy and also approaching teachers in the field who are very, very experienced in this,” Jefferson tells EducationHQ.

The problem here is not “science,” but who controls what counts as science and how “science” is used as control.

NCLB codifying what counted as “scientifically based” was cause for concern. But over the past two decades, a narrow definition of “science” has evolved, reinforcing the contradictory “science of” movement that demands applying that narrow view of “science” as a veneer for an ideological agenda.

What counts as “science” and credible evidence in education—and all fields—should not be abdicated to government bureaucracy (as evidenced by the current Trump administration).

Ultimately, the “science of” movement has proven to be less about teaching and learning or reforming education, and more about political and ideological control (parallel to the current misuse of “science” by Health and Human Services [HHS] Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)

For teaching and learning, scientific research certainly provides important and powerful evidence for teaching and teachers; however, the “science of” movement is distorting and controlling what counts as “science” for ideological and political agendas.

The Trump agenda for so-called “gold-standard science” is the logical and catastrophic logical outcome of many decades of political mandates for education reform.

The lesson?

Who controls science controls.

Recommended

The problem with vibes-based cellphone reporting – Kappan Online

Education, education reform

A4PEP Webinars

  • Rob Rogers and Melissa Hendrix unpacked the history and grave threat that Christian nationalism is posing to our public education system.
  • Paul Thomas revealed how lies and false messaging from the media have been used to try and convince the public that schools are failing, when in fact, they are not.
  • Derek Black outlined some of the history behind this movement and how it still is so relevant today as the Trump administration promotes federal vouchers and more money for charter schools.

Upcoming

Faith, Power, and Public Schools: Christian Nationalism’s Assault on Education in Colorado and Beyond, Katherine Stewart

Date & Time: Jun 22, 2025 04:00 PM

Register

Education, education reform, Educational Research, politics, reading, Science of Reading

The Science of Ideology: What Is Really Wrong with Education?

[Header Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash]

Responding to the symposium question “What Shall We Do about Reading Today?” Emmett A. Betts, professor of Education at Pennsylvania State College, opened the first article in a professional journal for elementary education with a broad claim:

In a democracy, the people get the kind of schools they want. One of the many functions of an educator is to point the way to ever better schools. If the people want many public and private institutions for the preparation of teachers regardless of the quality of the work or the teacher supply and demand, the people get them. If the people want better schools plants and instruction, they make their will known at the polls and they get what they want. In a democracy, the quantity and quality of educational opportunity is the product of what people want, and what they want is to no small degree conditioned by the educational leadership they have elected to follow. (p. 226)

This may read a bit idealistic or naive, but Betts, I think, offers an accurate characterization of the very complex public education system in the US—a system bound necessarily to the political system itself.

Betts then warns:

Very soon strong pressure will be felt by elementary school teachers to intensify instruction in certain areas, such as reading. This pressure will be brought to bear by non-educators who have found a deficiency but who may may offer no other solution than a “stronger prescription.” Years of fruitful research on learning many be cast aside in order to “do something about reading instruction….” To prevent this wastage, educators must be prepared to bring to bear a considerable accumulation of information that permits an adequate resolving of this problem. (p. 226)

Later in that issue, William S. Gray, University of Chicago, expands on Betts’s warning:

[R]ecent editorials…maintain that current deficiencies in reading are the product of “pseudo-scientific bungling and the innovation of so-called progressive methods of teaching. The solution advocated by one editor was the elimination of “impractical non-essentials,” which were not defined, and of “undisciplined dabbling with practical essentials. The implication of these vague criticisms is that recent innovations in teaching reading have been adopted without due consideration of essentials and of methods of achieving desired ends. Such assumptions are as unsound and merit no more consideration than a purely defensive attitude. (p. 235)

In forty-plus pages, eleven literacy scholars confront the same problems with a reading crisis that may sound familiar to people in 2025.

However, this is from 1942

And in a mere two decades, guess what the state of reading the US entailed?

“After half a century of [progressive reform and expanding public education],” wrote Jacques Barzun in Tomorrow’s Illiterates: The State of Reading Instruction Today (1961), “we who run businesses, carry on professions, work for the government, or engage in teaching itself are forced to admit that illiteracy is still with us” (xii-xiii).

Barzun adds, “the citizen who is interested (and who has managed to learn to read) [may have their] hair [stand] on end at hearing what folly has been condoned as educational theory during the past thirty years” (p. xiv).

Editor of this volume and author of chapters 1 and 7, Charles Child Walcutt argues: “One way to describe the reading problem is to say that it is a teacher problem and—even more—that it is a problem of the teaching of teachers” (p. 18).

And of course: “The assertion that the reading experts do not understand the theory of their system can be demonstrated if we point out the false assumptions, the faulty extrapolations from scientific research, and the absolute contradictions that appear in its central propositions and procedures” (pp. 19-20).

Over sixty years ago, a reading crisis was declared (twenty years after on just before it), teachers were blamed, and reading experts were accused of not understanding the science behind their own field.

Déjà vu all over again.

There is a recurring story—one that is profitable and easy to sell—that education in the US is a failure, notably reading and math education.

The problem with this story is that it has existed since the mid-1800s in some fashion; but as I share above, an intense era of education (reading and math) crisis is at least 80 years and running.

And then, the last 40 years has been characterized by perpetual education reform, several cycles of new standards, new tests, and constant high-stakes accountability.

At no point in the US has the public, the media, or political leaders declared education (reading or math) effective.

But since the 1980s, after the hyper-crisis panic of A Nation at Risk, the US has doubled and tripled down on in-school only reform—”pressure will be brought to bear by non-educators,” as Betts noted in 1942.

The story that isn’t compelling and is hard to sell is this: The history of education crisis and reform has been grounded in misdiagnosing educational problems, casting misguided blame, and mandating solutions that are destined to fail—and even cause harm.

However, here is a story told in research that the US will not accept:

Almost 63% of the variance in test performance was explained by social capital family income variables that influence the development of background knowledge. Background knowledge is a known predictor of standardized test results. Family income variables are immutable by schools. Only public policies, outside the control of school personnel, can influence family income….

Policy makers and education leaders should rethink the current reliance on standardized test results as the deciding factor to make decisions about student achievement, teacher quality, school effectiveness, and school leader quality. In effect, policies that use standardized test results to evaluate, reward, and sanction students and school personnel are doing nothing more than rewarding schools that serve advantaged students and punishing schools that serve disadvantaged students. (Maroun and Tienken, 2024)

In other words, the ways we measure school and teacher effectiveness as well as student achievement are in fact mostly measuring out-of-school factors.

So, what is really wrong with education?

Ideology/politics and market forces.

The disconnect between public, political, and media beliefs about education and decades of research reinforced by Maroun and Tienken is entirely ideological/political.

Many people in the US are bound to rugged individualism and the meritocracy myth, both of which feed into another belief that education transforms society.

So we are now at the story the US hates, refuses to acknowledges, and thus, does not sell: Schools reflect our society, but do not (cannot) transform it (reread the opening quote from Betts above).

There is a core libertarian belief in the US rejecting the dominance of systemic forces that drives crisis rhetoric about education as well as the politics and policy mandating how we implement our schools.

US public education has never been a singular process. There has never been one program or learning/teaching theory driving schools.

However, the ideological attacks on schools, teachers, and students have always reduced claims of crisis to simplistic problems and blame (reading the entire journal issue from 1942 or the book from 1961 is eerie and frustrating).

But possibly as powerful and problematic as ideology/politics is the impact of market forces on educational practices.

To be blunt, the education market benefits from perpetual education crisis, not from successful education reform. (See also: The healthcare market benefits from perpetual illness, not curing diseases and healthy people.)

Education crisis and reform, then, have been almost entirely ideological/political and market driven.

Ironically, perpetual crisis/reform benefits both ideology/politics and the market.

Regretfully, perpetual crisis/reform does not benefit schools, teachers, or students.

This also is a story that doesn’t sell: The current “science of” movement (science of reading, science of math, science of learning) is nothing new; in fact, this is simply the science of ideology (again).

Because of the outsized impact of ideology/politics and the market on how we talk about, judge, and implement schooling in the US, we do not have a crisis, but an entrench set of failures we lack the political will to address: perpetual opportunity and achievement gaps between affluent, white students and minoritized/marginalized students (Black and brown students, impoverished students, multilingual learners, and special needs students).

Yet those gaps have been about the same for many decades and across all areas of learning (there is no gap in reading, for example) that isn’t also in math or science, or even civics).

But as Maroun and Tienken show, those measured gaps are more about social inequity than education—even though those measures also show in-school inequity as well that magnifies systemic inequities.

The ideology/politics driving how we view and implement our schools is corrupted by a fatalism about needed social reform.

It isn’t that we cannot build a better society; it isn’t that we cannot build better schools.

It is that we simply have chosen that neither matters more than our sacred—and misguided—beliefs and market.

Recommended

Enough with the doom and gloom. American education isn’t failing. Perry Bacon Jr.

The overwhelming majority of American students are reaching “baseline proficiency,” in math, reading and science, according to PISA. That’s almost certainly because of our public school systems, where about 87 percent of students in grades K-12 get their education. U.S. politicians for a while were pushing the aspirational idea that most students should score proficient or above on the NAEP tests. That is a very high and probably unrealistic standard. Most of America’s students are reaching the NAEP “basic” level, mirroring the PISA results.

Education, education reform, Educational Research, NAEP

NAEP: A Modest Proposal

[Header Photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu on Unsplash]

Likely the most influential standardized test in the US is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), under the purview of the beleaguered US Department of Education.

Also without question, NAEP is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented standardized tests since the mainstream media, political leaders, pundits, and the public routinely shout “Crisis!” with each release of NAEP data.

NAEP’s achievement levels are misleading at best, but at worst, those achievement levels were designed to create the appearance of perpetuate educational failure, and yes, crisis.

“Proficient” is almost always conflated with “grade level” resulting in false claims, for example, that 2/3 of fourth graders are reading below grade level. NAEP’s “basic” is approximately what most states identify as “proficient”—suggesting on grade level (see an extensive analysis here).

What most people misunderstand as well about NAEP is its purpose: NAEP was born in the fertile soil of high-stakes accountability education reform spurred by the Reagan administration’s propaganda A Nation at Risk. Reagan sought to reintroduce forced prayer in schools and wanted to close the Department of Education, labeled an “abomination.”

However, what Reagan spawned was over four decades of ever-changing standards and tests to hold schools, teachers, and students accountable. In short, NAEP was created as a test of random samples of students to hold states accountable for their educational standards and outcomes (historically, public education has been the responsibility of the states, and NCLB in 2001 was a departure toward more federal oversight).

Frankly, NAEP was designed as an accountability mechanism, not a way to provide feedback on individual student achievement. (Note that state-level accountability testing was designed to provide individual student assessment that should provide evidence for instruction.)

In 2025, on the heels of recent shouts of “Crisis!” (again) because almost everyone has misunderstood and misrepresented NAEP scores across math, reading, and even civics, Reagan’s dream may be coming true since the Trump administration has promised to end the USDOE, and that move imperils the future of NAEP.

As Peter Greene has confronted, some have taken this uncertainty about NAEP to propose turning NAEP into (you should pause here to prepare yourself for the inanity) the failed Common Core experiment that sought to replace the state-based public education accountability process with national standards and testing.

Into the nonsense that is NAEP historically and the current doubling-down on Common Core Redux, I want to make a modest proposal about the future of NAEP.

Actually I want to make two modest proposals, acknowledging that the first is never going to happen (although it is the one more strongly supported by empirical data; you know, the “science” that so many education reformers claim to worship).

I strongly reject standardized testing as well as traditional classroom testing and grades. That has been at the core of my 40-plus-year career, and again, this is informed not just by my experiences as an educator but by a very robust body of research.

Therefore, my first modest (and completely unrealistic in the US) proposal is the conclusions reached by Maron and Tienken:

Almost 63% of the variance in test performance was explained by social capital family income variables that influence the development of background knowledge. Background knowledge is a known predictor of standardized test results. Family income variables are immutable by schools. Only public policies, outside the control of school personnel, can influence family income.

The United States has one of the highest levels of childhood poverty among Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. It is well known that the social safety net in the United States is not as strong as some nations in Europe and other parts of the world [20]. Neoliberal policies have greatly reduced government support for families in the United States. Important social policy frameworks that reduce poverty, such as monetary, labor, fiscal, and health policies, have been weakened over the last 40 years, causing increases in childhood poverty in the United States compared to other democratic countries [41].

Although some education policy makers in the United States claim that standardized test results are an important component of a comprehensive system of educational quality control, the results from decades of research on the topic suggest otherwise [42]. The influence of family social capital variables manifests itself in standardized test results. Policy makers and education leaders should rethink the current reliance on standardized test results as the deciding factor to make decisions about student achievement, teacher quality, school effectiveness, and school leader quality. In effect, policies that use standardized test results to evaluate, reward, and sanction students and school personnel are doing nothing more than rewarding schools that serve advantaged students and punishing schools that serve disadvantaged students.

Alas, the US will never follow this last point because we refuse to acknowledge systemic forces and remain a people fatally committed to rugged individualism and bootstrap mythologies.

And thus, here is my compromise, a modest proposal that can and should be explored for the future of NAEP:

  • Rename achievement levels in standardized testing that share a national standard metric for the levels (all states and NAEP would share the same achievement levels and metric).
  • Achievement levels must be age-level and not grade-level (currently, using “grade level” allows states to game scores through grade retention, for example). A clear system of “below age level,” “age level,” and “above age level” would simplify reporting and allow for more accurate political, media, and public responses to data.

This proposal would be a first step, I hope. The problem at first is that this doesn’t address the excessive testing culture the US has embraced without positive outcomes for over forty years.

This first step, I think, can create a new basis for evaluating and viewing our public schools, and then, we may be primed to begin dismantling the standardized testing machine—or at least become more acclimated to reducing it dramatically.

The great irony of the power of high-stakes testing in the education accountability era is that it has proven only one thing: Weighing a pig does not make it fatter.

Testing, testing, and testing has not improved schools, teachers, or students, but it has created a perpetuate state of educational crisis.

Perpetual educational crisis serves only political agendas and the unquenchable education marketplace.

If we can entertain for a moment of idealism that the Trump disaster doesn’t destroy both the USDOE and public education, let’s consider how to more forward in ways that better serve the promise of public education and our fragile democracy.

If not an end to NAEP, at least a better NAEP that serves the interest of students and not political or market agendas?

See Also

Big Lies of Education: Reading Proficiency and NAEP

Beware Grade-Level Reading and the Cult of Proficiency

Rethinking Reading Proficiency

Education, education reform, Educational Research, NAEP, reading, Science of Reading

The Zombie Politics of Misinformation about Students Reading at Grade Level

[Header Photo by Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández on Unsplash]

Yesterday, we had our last class session in my upper-level writing and research course that is grounded in students analyzing and evaluating how media covers a chosen education topic.

In that last class, we debriefed about what students concluded about media coverage of education. While some found the coverage valid and informative, much of the discussion focused on why media perpetuates misinformation more often than not—notably about student reading proficiency in the US.

Right on cue, then, I saw this posted on social media, Teaching reading is rocket science, with these two recurring claims that are, in fact, misleading at best and false at worst (see “Recommended” links below):

Eli’s story, and the stories of all my students, are not the exception. They represent the shared reality for two-thirds of our children, here in California and across the country since the 1990s. My students are not at risk because they cannot yet read — they are at risk because not knowing how to read limits their access to opportunities, both academically and beyond.

Research shows when we teach students to read by directly guiding them to break the code of how sounds in letters work, about 95% of them can become strong readers — including multilingual learners and those with dyslexia. So why have only one-third of our fourth graders been reading at grade level for the past three decades? This gap persists because students haven’t had access to evidence-based literacy instruction drawn from decades of vast interdisciplinary research in areas such as cognitive psychology, linguistics, communication sciences and education.

The “2/3 of students are not reading a grade level” claim is one of the most powerful recurring claims in the media. Note these high-profile examples:

Emily Hanford in APM Reports:

The stakes were high. Research shows that children who don’t learn to read by the end of third grade are likely to remain poor readers for the rest of their lives, and they’re likely to fall behind in other academic areas, too. People who struggle with reading are more likely to drop out of high school, to end up in the criminal justice system, and to live in poverty. But as a nation, we’ve come to accept a high percentage of kids not reading well. More than 60 percent of American fourth-graders are not proficient readers, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and it’s been that way since testing began in the 1990s.

Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times:

One of the most bearish statistics for the future of the United States is this: Two-thirds of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient in reading.

And even a college-based literacy professor in The Conversation:

Five years after the pandemic forced children into remote instruction, two-thirds of U.S. fourth graders still cannot read at grade level. Reading scores lag 2 percentage points below 2022 levels and 4 percentage points below 2019 levels.

Despite ample evidence to the contrary and repeated clarifications from many educators and scholars (See “Big Lie” link in “Recommended” below), media characterizations of student reading proficiency continues to be misrepresented, primarily by misunderstanding NAEP achievement levels, because the public has always believed that “kids today can’t read”—despite there being little evidence of a reading “crisis” over the recurring claims of “crisis” reaching back into at least the 1940s.

Two points are important to clarify:

  1. NAEP achievement levels are confusing because “basic” is approximately what most states consider “proficient” and by implication “grade level.” NAEP “proficient” is well above grade level, set at an “aspirational” [1] level that is misleading and creates a perpetual appearance of failure for students, teachers, and schools.
  2. Most states—notably Mississippi and Louisiana—set their “proficient” level just above the mid-point of NAEP “basic” (MS) or just below (LA):
Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto NAEP Scales, 2007–22

In short, if we consider NAEP and state assessments of reading valid, about 1/3 of students have over the last couple of decades performed below “basic” (NAEP) and thus seem to be below grade level in grade 4.

NAEP Grade 4 Reading National Trends

While the NAEP misinformation and misunderstanding is grounded in the “aspirational” use of “proficient,” the “95% of students can be on grade level” claim is just wildly overstated, and ironically, not based on scientific evidence (despite this being a refrain by the “science of” movement).

I recommend reading Can 95% of Children Learn to Read? to see some of how this claim gained its zombie status.

Historically and currently, many in the US have been and are concerned about student reading acquisition; this, of course, is a valid concern, notably that marginalized and vulnerable populations of students are disproportionately struggling to meet whatever standard we set for “proficient” or “grade level” (see HERE that explores how MS has not closed the race or socioeconomic achievement gaps, for example).

There is an insidious zombie politics to claims about 2/3 of students not reading at grade level, but that if we just did the right thing, 95% of students would read at grade level.

Since neither claim is empirically true, we must confront that basing education claims and reform on misunderstanding and misinformation have not yet worked and are unlikely to work moving forward.

Note

[1] Rosenberg, B. (2004, May). What’s proficient? The No Child Left Behind Act and the many meanings of proficiency. Washington, DC: American Federation of Teachers. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED497886.pdf

Recommended

“Science of Reading” Playing Numbers Games Not Supported by Science

Big Lies of Education: Reading Proficiency and NAEP

Education, education reform, Educational Research, literacy, NAEP, politics, reading, Science of Reading

Webinar: The Manufactured Crisis: Exposing the False Narrative of Public Education’s “Failure” (A4PEP)

The Manufactured Crisis: Exposing the False Narrative of Public Education’s “Failure”

[Click HERE for recording]

Date & Time

Apr 16, 2025 08:30 PM EST

Description

Join us for a timely and vital conversation on April 16 at 6:30 p.m. ET with Dr. P.L. Thomas, Professor of Education at Furman University. For decades, media and policymakers have pushed a narrative that America’s public schools are “failing.” But who benefits from this story, and who is harmed by it? Dr. Thomas will expose how the education reform industry has fueled a false crisis, undermining trust in public schools while advancing corporate-driven reforms. Drawing on his experience as a teacher, scholar, and national award-winning writer, Dr. Thomas will offer critical insights into how we can challenge disinformation and reclaim a narrative rooted in equity, democracy, and community empowerment.

6:30 pm, April 16

[Click HERE for presentation]

Education, education reform, Educational Research, literacy, reading, Science of Reading

Recommended: Effective practices for literacy teaching

Effective practices for literacy teaching, Colin Harrison, Greg Brooks, P. David Pearson, Sari Sulkunen, Renata Valtin (2025)

In light of the PISA 2022 student results, which showed a decline in performance in basic reading skills across Europe, this report presents a detailed literature review of the most recent European and international research on effective approaches to literacy teaching. It highlights practices that have been properly evaluated and are supported by evidence of impact.

Targeted primarily at policymakers, but also relevant to teachers, parents, and all those contributing to children’s literacy development, the report analyses over 600 studies on effective teaching practices (both pedagogical and content-specific), support programmes, and policies that promote literacy for all children across the EU. It covers different levels of education and takes into account gender perspectives as well as the needs of vulnerable and special needs groups.

Based on the key findings, the authors discuss the teaching of comprehension beyond letters and words (e.g. drawing inferences, judging relevance and trustworthiness), the role of dispositional characteristics such as motivation, metacognition, and world knowledge, and the teaching of digital literacy skills, including critically evaluating online information. Building on these findings, they present 20 research-informed recommendations for policymaking.

Education, education reform, Educational Research, sexism

Education: How the Market and Fads Poison a Robust Field

[Header Photo by Thomas Kolnowski on Unsplash]

My high school English teacher and eventual mentor, Lynn Harrill, told me in my junior year that I should be a teacher.

I laughed, and certainly as teens are apt to do, hurt his feelings.

Almost fifty years later, and I have been a career educator since 1984.

I realized I wanted to be a teacher and a writer during my junior college years—the former because I had a job as a tutor and the latter because my speech teacher, Steven Brannon, introduced my to e.e. cummings.

I declared my secondary English education major when I transferred the fall of my junior year. And then, almost immediately, I learned a harsh lesson about becoming an education major: It was a “lesser” degree.

I took as many English courses as I could as an undergrad, and in ever class, I had to out myself as an education major, not an English major (almost most of my close friends were English majors).

Over the next five decades, I have had to navigate that “lesser” status when I tried to enter an MFA program while teaching high school full-time (nope), tried to apply for a PhD in English while teaching high school full time (nope), and then completed an EdD (yet another “lesser” degree to go with with my BA in English Education and MEd).

And since 2002, I have had to correct people who assume I am in the English department; nope, I am in Education.

In the good ol’ U.S. of A., as well, the standard beliefs are that education is failing, teachers are people who can’t do (and were mostly weak students themselves), and the discipline of education is a joke.

Just as a recent example, see this on social media:

I have recently submitted a book chapter, in fact, on two “pernicious” fads in education—grit and growth mindset.

However, I believe the standard attacks on education, teachers, and then the discipline of education are gross oversimplifications that miss almost entirely the real problems (what Vainker is addressing above and what I am confronting in my chapter on grit and growth mindset).

There are layers to the problem.

First, education as a discipline is robust and valid. My own recognition of that, however, did not fully develop until my EdD program where I was engaged with the scholarship, philosophy, and theory of the field of education—and not distracted by issues of certification and bureaucracy.

Now, that means when people are attacking “education” and the “pernicious fads” they are in fact not criticizing the discipline.

Here are the layers of problems that dilute a valid field:

  • Certification and accreditation bureaucracy. Regretfully, education is a profession that feels compelled to mimic more respected fields like medicine and law, where credentials are required. However, that layer has more often than not been reductive for the discipline because of the inherent flaws with credentialing and bureaucracy.
  • The education market place. The current “science of reading” (SOR) movement is repeating what happened during the Common Core era—the education market place using branding (SOR, CC) to spur purchasing cycles in education. To be blunt, the single most powerful and corrupting aspect of education as a field is the market. Any credible or valid education research is necessarily reduced when it is packaged and sold; this is exactly what happened with multiple intelligences, learning styles, grit, growth mindset, etc., creating the perception that the research isn’t credible instead of acknowledging that the marketing is the problem (although in some cases, the market is perpetuating flawed research as well). In short, education reform is an industry, not a process for improving teaching and learning in the US.
  • Education celebrities. A parallel problem with education market forces is the education celebrity who corrupts the field of education by selling programs, fads, or themselves as “experts” (and sometimes, all of these at once). This is a problematic concern since many of us who work in education, of course, are paid as professionals. Simply being paid as a professional is not something to criticize in a capitalistic society, of course, but money can and does corrupt. One of the best (worst?) examples of how an education celebrity can distort significantly credible and valid research is Ruby Payne, who cashed in (literally) on NCLB mandates and funding. Payne peddled stereotypes about poverty and teaching children in poverty—even though a robust body of research on poverty refuted nearly everything she packaged, promoted, and sold. Part of the problem here is that education celebrities and the market can easily prey on education and educators because the US has been politically negligent in providing schools, teachers, and students the sort of conditions in which all children can learn.
  • Sexism. Here is a fact at the core of many problems in education: More than 7 out of 10 K-12 teachers and most teacher educators/scholars are women. I leave this as the last point for emphasis because I believe sexism is the foundation of why education remains disrespected as a field and why there is so little political and public support for teachers as professionals (note the current rush to support scripted curriculum as one example). The current focus on “science,” as well, is another sexist movement (repeating the same sort of claims during NCLB) since the quantitative/qualitative divide in what research matters is highly gendered (men do “hard” science, but women do “soft” science).

Bashing student achievement, school and teacher quality, and teaching as a profession as well as education as a field are all a sort of lazy and unexamined national past time in the US.

These sorts of attacks and criticisms are shrugged off as common knowledge and even jokes; again, I believe, primarily because we still see teaching as just something women do with children.

While there is some validity to criticizing educational research that is packaged and sold, this is not something unique to education as a field.

Consider as just one example the perversion of the 10,000 rule in psychology, and the power of Malcolm Gladwell as “celebrity” to do just that.

Psychology and economics, in fact, have experienced crises of replication that should tarnish those fields at least as much as how we marginalize education.

Yet, psychology and economics are seen as men’s professions, and thus, professions, and receive a huge pass when they simply do not deserve that.

We should stop bashing education as a field, but we should also be far more vigilant about protecting educational research and practice from the corrosive impact of bureaucracy, the market, celebrities, and sexism.