OKC think tank questions state's educational standards

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Oct 2, 2006 by Janice Francis-Smith

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, an Oklahoma City-based "think tank," released a report last week entitled "Hot Air: How Oklahoma Inflates Its Educational Progress Under No Child Left Behind." But the study is comparing apples to oranges, say officials with the state Department of Education.

"Oklahoma has, on the whole, set unusually low educational standards for its students, teachers and schools," said Kevin Carey, the report's author and research and policy manager of Washington, D.C.-based think tank Education Sector. "While objective measures put Oklahoma in the lower half of states in terms of educational performance, measures reported by the Oklahoma State Department of Education consistently paint a far rosier picture."

Education Sector created its own ranking system of the 50 states using each state's reports filed with the U.S. Department of Education under the federal No Child Left Behind law. The think tank named its ranking system the "Pangloss Index," in honor of an overly optimistic character in Voltaire's novel Candide.

According to Education Sector's index, Oklahoma should rank 13th in the nation in student proficiency based on what the state Department of Education has reported. However, Oklahoma students who took the U.S. Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress tests scored toward the bottom of the list of states in math and reading skills, both nationally and in comparison to other states in the region.

Brian Hobbs, director of marketing for the Council of Public Affairs, said the report is not accusing the Department of Education of falsifying information or of not complying with federal reporting standards. However, the federal law allows states considerable leeway in their reporting standards, he said.

Wendy Pratt, communications director for the Oklahoma Department of Education, said No Child Left Behind directs each state to set its own educational objectives and standards, and directs the states to develop a means of testing their own particular standard. That means no two states have the same standards or testing requirements. In the absence of a consistent standard for reporting under No Child Left Behind, Pratt questioned how Education Sector developed its "Pangloss" ranking system.

Oklahoma is one of just four states - along with Tennessee, Maryland and West Virginia - to receive "Full Approval" of its standards and assessment system from the U.S. Department of Education under the provisions of No Child Left Behind, said Pratt.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress tests are consistent from state to state, but Pratt said the tests serve a very different purpose than do the state tests. While state reporting is based on data from testing about 45,000 students, the National Assessment test is administered to a sampling of students, 2,500 from each state.

In a report the National Assessment Governing Board issued in 2002 regarding the use of National Assessment Educational Progress tests results to confirm state results, the board noted the information yielded by the tests is limited. Definitions of the subgroups of students taking the test, population shifts, sampling procedures, student motivation (since the test does not affect their grades), item formats and other factors may impact test results, the report stated.

"Such differences may be minimal or great in number and in size and cannot reasonably be expected to operate in all states in equal fashion," reads the report. "The greater differences between the respective state tests and NAEP, the greater the complexity in using NAEP as confirmatory evidence for state test results and the greater cautions in interpretation that should accompany the weighing of the confirmatory evidence."