Statement from Achieve President Michael Cohen on 2015 NAEP Results

October 28, 2015 - Achieve President Michael Cohen issued the following statement today regarding the results on the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress:

"A dip in the national average on the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is cause for concern, but not alarm. The majority of states actually saw no change in their scores from 2013. However, the decreases for many states in 8th grade math are unexpected and need a full review.

"It is far too soon for us to have a full understanding of the causes of the score changes; fingers have been pointed at demographics, reform policies, the ongoing implementation of the Common Core State Standards, poverty, and more. It is going to take careful analysis to disentangle and assign weight to the range of possible causes and then determine what local, state, and national responses should be.

"NAEP is a valuable tool for monitoring student achievement nationally. Today's score release is an example of why we need such national data, and NAEP is the only source of data on a national scale.

"The National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees NAEP, should carefully review its frameworks and assessments in order to ensure that NAEP is in step with the leadership of the states. It appears that there is a mismatch between NAEP and all states' math standards, no matter if they are common standards or not. Both the recent analysis by AIR and our review of states without common standards show that NAEP is testing some 4th and 8th grade math standards that do not appear until later grades in those states."

To view the NAEP results, visit http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/

Chad Colby (202) 419-1570, ccolby@achieve.org