Mark White is chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the Nation’s Report Card, and a Republican member of the Tennessee General Assembly.
Academic testing may be unpopular in some corners, but as students begin taking exams in reading, math, U.S. history and civics for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (also known as the Nation’s Report Card), it is worth remembering that these gold-standard assessments are essential and can drive real improvement. And in few places has that been more true than in Tennessee.
The Nation’s Report Card holds kids to high expectations and offers the only comparative look at how students are doing from state to state. In Tennessee, we’ve used it to recalibrate and strengthen our state standards — and as a barometer to track our progress over the years and relative to our neighbors. Other states should do the same.
In 2007, after poor results revealed we were failing our kids, state legislators got busy and raised Tennessee’s K-12 standards, aligned classroom practices to those standards and overhauled our state tests to make them more rigorous.
The result? It took time, but between 2011 and 2015, Tennessee was the fastest-improving state in the nation on NAEP assessments. And for the first time in 2024, Tennessee ranked in the top 25 states for proficiency in fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading.
Other states would be wise to chart a similar course. The 2024 Nation’s Report Card showed continued learning declines across the country that predated but worsened during the pandemic. A University of California at San Diego study last fall made national headlines when it reported that 1 in 8 of the school’s incoming freshmen performed below the middle school level in math.
I’m a grandfather to a college student. I’m grateful he’s had the resources and opportunities to pursue his dream of becoming a landscape architect. But I can’t help but worry about other young people who may be pursuing college or job training. Their hopes for the future might be dashed by their lack of academic readiness at a time when the world of work requires more skills and knowledge, not less.
This obviously has significant implications for our kids, but it also puts our economy at risk. Failing to improve U.S. educational achievement will lead to lower lifetime earnings for young people, reduced gross domestic product for states and declining global competitiveness for the country.
Reversing course will be challenging, but we’ve shown it’s possible. Tennessee embraced change right around the time when neighboring Mississippi raised its standards to more closely mirror NAEP’s, a shift that led to progress now famously referred to as the “Mississippi miracle.”
In Tennessee’s case, lawmakers asked ourselves why results on tests administered in Tennessee schools showed that upwards of 90 percent of our students were proficient in math and reading , while the Nation’s Report Card showed that less than 30 percent were.
Sure, it took some prodding. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce gave us an “F” for truth in advertising around student proficiency in a 2007 report. But once it became clear we weren’t — like many states — being honest or asking enough of our students, we reset our expectations and raised standards.
Some critics say NAEP’s standards are too high, but that’s just excuse-making. I was recently appointed as chair of the board that oversees and sets achievement levels for the Nation’s Report Card. We consider students to be working at the NAEP’s “proficient” level when they’ve demonstrated solid academic performance for their grade level and competency over challenging material.
Of course, setting high standards isn’t enough. You have to help students and teachers meet them. We passed several policies in Tennessee with that in mind, including a science-of-reading law to ensure schools use evidence-based literacy practices. We also developed a policy to ensure children don’t simply get pushed up from third to fourth grade without knowing how to read at the appropriate standard.
I’ve been on the receiving end of complaints from parents worried their kids would be held back. But I worry about moving kids along when they haven’t mastered what they need to know. Our new focus on getting all students reading by third grade has allowed more students to access the help they need, including tutoring and summer learning opportunities.
Policy solutions may vary from state to state, but kids across the country benefit when leaders use data to drive decisions and hold students to high standards. We haven’t spiked the ball yet in Tennessee. But we are making progress, and other states can too. All that’s required is the collective will and firm resolution to do the right thing.
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