Be Prepared for MisNAEPery
Attention Public Education Advocates: SBAE is building a national policy network and teaching conservative school boards to weaponize NAEP proficiency levels in order to advance those policies.
On Wednesday, January 29, 2025, the results of the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) will be released and you should be prepared for an over abundance of “misNAEPery.”
What I Learned at the SBAE Summit
Last week, I attended the School Boards for Academic Excellence (SBAE) Education Policy & Training Summit in Orlando. The SBAE is a right wing, anti-woke school board association whose goal appears (from my observances) to be: 1.) create a National Conservative School Board Association that will compete with the National School Board Association (NSBA) and (probably more important) 2.) create a network of state education policy institutes, becoming a clearing house of conservative education policy that could be implemented at the local school board level. They describe themselves as a national capacity-building organization and it seems they want to become the ALEC of Education. (By the way, ALEC was in attendance.)
The story they tell is that after some success in getting conservative school board members elected, it became apparent that just getting hard-right school board members into office was not enough. State and National School Board Associations were teaching new board members to be a rubberstamp for their superintendents and newly elected conservative board members needed supports created so they could to advance their conservative adenda at the local level. SBAE was formed about a year ago and they can provide sample policies, attorneys to help write new or amend current policies, and they can link board members to conservative organizations willing to audit their curriculum, recommend ideologically alligned school board attorneys or audit curriculum to determine whether it is “appropriate.” And they are very well funded (The 3-day conference included multiple meals and cost just $150.)
The summit was open to state network organization leaders and school board members and was designed to “empower organizational leaders and school board members to become reformers for academic excellence in their school districts.” There were maybe 75 attendees, about half were school board members, the rest were vendors and state policy organizations like the Freedom Foundation, the Civics Alliance, the Indiana Family Institute, Massachusetts Family Institute and the Wyoming Family Alliance.
[I want to make clear that I met many sincere and dedicated individuals and enjoyed many conversations. There were frequent digs at “Tampon Tim” by the guy from Minnesota and frequent references to “indoctrination” but a few of the sessions were quite good. The sessions on Chronic Absenteeism and Legislative Advocacy were very informative. The session on Parlimentary Procedure was good, even though it was framed a “Defensive Combat for Minority-Member School Boards.” The other attendees from Florida never challenged my presence there.]
It became clear almost immediately that a major goal was move away conservative school board members away from culture war issues (they said “WOKE is dead”) and focus on student proficiency levels to label public schools as failing in order to advance their conservative agenda. We were taught that every school board candidate should understand that “student achievement results are really much lower than what they’ve been told” and our election campaign should be focused on improving student outcomes. We were told “all states have low proficiency levels” and that state assessments (and even Jeb Bush’s Florida A-F School grade system) “create a false sense of high achievement.” (Also, more money was not going to make a difference, of course.) Board members were encouraged to use stagnant test scores to justify eliminating DEI programs, for example.
I am certain many conservative ed policy folks are eagerly waiting to spin Wednesday’s NAEP results, whatever they may be.
What is MisNAEPery?
The NAEP is congressionally mandated and is referred to as “the Nation’s Report Card.” Every two years, a random sample of 4th and 8th grade students are assessed in mathematics and reading and every two years politicians and advocates misuse NAEP data to serve advocacy goals, to blame or to advance particular policy solutions. The practice is so common it is referred to as “misNAEPery.”
One of the most common misuses of NAEP data is to confuse NAEP “Proficiency” levels with grade level proficiency. The two are not the same. Moms for Liberty is constantly suggesting that any child testing below “Proficiency” is unable to read or do math. This is misleading. NAEP “Proficiency” is NOT a measurement of on-grade level performance, but something much higher. This is made clear on NAEP’s own website which states:
“Students performing at or above the Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments).” NAEP “Proficiency” is a bar set well above “grade level.” https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/
Moms for Liberty conflates NAEP proficiency with grade level proficiency so often that I had to write a blogpost about it.
It has been said that “in general, people offering misNAEPery can only be of two types: (1) people who don’t know any better, or (2) people who know better but are shameless/irresponsible. I wonder which category they fall into?
Additional Reading
Here are some resources that can help you prepare yourself to avoid the impending storm of misNAEPery:
- “How to interpret—and not misinterpret—forthcoming NAEP results” : https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/how-interpret-and-not-misinterpret-forthcoming-naep-results
- “Unpacking confusion about new national standardized test scores” https://www.vpm.org/news/2022-10-26/unpacking-confusion-about-new-national-standardized-test-scores
- “Black And Hispanic Students Are Making Meaningful Gains, But It’s Hard To Tell” https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/black-and-hispanic-students-are-making-meaningful-gains-but-its-hard-to-tell/
- “What New NAEP Scores Can – And Can’t – Tell Us” https://ewa.org/educated-reporter/what-new-naep-scores-can-and-cant-tell-us
- “When Bad Things Happen to Good NAEP Data” https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/when-bad-things-happen-to-good-naep-data/2013/07
