Non-Alignment of Standards Not Culprit for Low Scores
  by Matthew Ladner (4/29/08)

Recently I appeared on the Horizon public affairs program together with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, to discuss the No Child Left Behind law and our state AIMS test.

During the discussion, Superintendent Horne said the main reason Arizona students perform poorly on the national NAEP test, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, is due to a non-alignment of standards. If, for example, Arizona does not teach the math concepts in fourth grade that appear on the fourth grade math NAEP, one could expect lower average grades.

The explanation seems quite plausible, and doubtlessly there are some states that have better aligned their standards to NAEP than others. But how big a deal is this, in terms of Arizona’s performance? As a study done by the American Institute of Research shows, not much.

The study compared international science scores for eighth graders to eighth grade NAEP science scores. Singapore came in first, with 55 percent of students ranked as “proficient” or above. Massachusetts was the highest-performing U.S. state, with 41 percent proficient. Just 20 percent of Arizona eighth grades ranked proficient.

Alignment error ought to be much greater between nations than between American states. Furthermore, one would be hard pressed to buy into the notion that countries such as Singapore, Korea, Estonia, Hungary, and Slovakia simply have national standards more closely aligned to the American NAEP test than Arizona.

When we get clobbered in science proficiency by countries like Estonia, we have problems that go much deeper than standards alignment.

Dr. Matthew Ladner is vice president of research at the Goldwater Institute.

Visit http://goldwaterinstitute.org/AboutUs/ArticleView.aspx?id=2169 for the comparison table!

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