The Sky is Falling. Again. Test Score Lunacy. Again.

More comprehensive NAEP data dropped over the weekend and it gave the haters and weak-minded another chance to gasp and point fingers. In Los Angeles, as in other places I'm sure, it was also an opportunity to amplify the recently-released state scores on the mordantly-named Smarter Balanced assessments. Never ones to waste an opportunity to advance the "failing schools" narrative, the usual suspects piled on. 

I've already done the NAEP thing. Here are a few words on the SBAC scores. 

The rhetoric has been typically overheated. The Los Angeles Times predictably howled over "deep pandemic setbacks" and, credited LAUSD Superintendent and world-class suit-wearer Alberto Carvalho with promoting the tired canard that "five years of gradual academic progress in the nation’s second-largest school district have been reversed." 

Newsflash: Nothing has been reversed. Not one student knows less today than they knew five years ago. Not one. Test scores are lower than they were a minute ago (see: Pandemic!). That's it.

The release of NAEP data gave the Times a chance to return to SBAC and turn up the scare quotient, as "setbacks" became "drops," and results were described as "devastating" and "dismal." As with most things LA Timesian, this particular article settles comfortably into anxiety over how much this is all going to cost, reminding readers of "the multibillion-dollar investments in public education" California is making in the effort to get everybody back up to speed, and presumably warning them to be sure and get their money's worth.

Other outlets had similarly breathless takes. EdSource had "2022 California standardized test results wipe out years of steady progress." CBS News Sacramento had the mystically incongruous "Smarter Balanced test scores reveal California students doing worse in school." Even the freakin New York Times got into the California bashing biz, but with extra spice. With a headline that could have come direct via @DougJBalloon, they weighed in with the following:

I went to the state website to see what all the noise was about. I spent about a half hour on it and found it to be confusing and missing important features that could have made comparisons easy. I guess the point is to make interpretation of the scores difficult and time-consuming. That way, interpretation becomes the province of interpreters as they tell us what the scores mean.

Even so, from what I could gather, the number of eighth grade students either meeting or exceeding the ELA "standard" in 2018-2019 was 49.41%. In 2021-2022 it was 46.64%. That is to say, a drop of less than 3% of students. Math is certainly a challenge, as 2018-2019 meet+exceed was 36.63% and in 2021-2022 it was 29.24%. However, digging in a bit further, we find that in all three categories of math: Concepts & Procedures, Problem Solving and Modeling & Data Analysis, and Communicating Reasoning, the combined percentages of students achieving scores of "Near" and "Above Standard" actually went UP(!) anywhere from 3-5 % in each category. 

That's correct. Even though the percentage of students scoring "Standard Not Met" for overall Achievement Level went from 40.78% to 48.02% (resulting in the big drop), student performance in the three domains actually improved. The only explanation I can come up with--other than the tests are bogus--is that the low scores were significantly lower than in 2019.

I've written about test score "data" before and, because I can't help myself, I'm sure I will again. But it almost feels like the things I'm writing about everyone knows already. Or would, if they cared to. It's almost as if these media outlets and think tanks and advocacy organizations are not interpreting the scores in good faith. As if they have a whole different agenda. 

How many different ways can someone write "Test scores went down during the pandemic"? Is there anyone who doesn't know this already? Is anyone surprised by this? We don't have data yet for test scores and school closings. We don't have data for test score (I won't write learning loss) recovery. We really don't know anything except that test scores when down. 

Pandemic!

But that won't stop the interpreters from spinning the results to support their preferred assumptions, and it won't stop the haters from making shit up to serve their purposes. That's okay. Just don’t listen to them if you can help it, and whatever you do, don't believe them.

You all are a tough bunch. Don't let the bastards grind you down.