Don't Forget--No Nation's Report Card NAEP Test This Year

You may have forgotten, or just not noticed at the time, but I want to remind you that last November, the National Center for Education Statistics pulled the plug on the 2021 NAEP, the Big Standardized Test that is supposed to measure the nation's progress in math and reading. Betsy DeVos asked for cancellation. The National Assessment Governing Board, chaired by Haley Barbour agreed with it. The CCSSO exec director said she believed it was the right decision.

The NAGB felt that it was best to put off the test until 2022 "when it should be feasible to collect and report valid and reliable data." (In other words, that's not possible this year.)

James Woodworth, head of NCES, said in part

Due to the impact of the COVID pandemic on school operations, it will not be possible for NCES to conduct the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments in accordance with the statutory requirements defined by the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA) which requires NAEP to be conducted in a valid and reliable manner every 2 years (20 U.S.C. 9622(b)(2)(B)).

Also

The change in operations and lack of access to students to be assessed means that NAEP will not be able to produce estimates of what students know and can do that would be comparable to either past or future national or state estimates.

With students presenting a mix of in-person, hybrid, and distance schooling, the NAGP had determined that adjusting the NAEP to that reality would cost something like $50 million. 

Not suited for conditions on the ground. Too expensive to fix. Too unlikely to yield any useful or valid data.  Granted, this was last November, and the test would have been in January, but is there any reason to believe that conditions have changed so radically since then that the state level Big Standardized Test now makes sense? Particularly with a whole host of new variables from size of the test to date of administration thrown in. 

Cancellation was a good call for the NAEP; it would also be the right call for the 2021 federally mandated state level Big Standardized Test.