The National Assessment of Educational Progress, “the nation’s report card,” released subscores in vocabulary from the 2011 test and compared them to comparable scores in 2009. The test is given to randomly selected students in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and it has no specific “vocabulary” test. The vocabulary subscore is simply computed by using questions on the reading test that are designed to assess vocabulary.
The vocabulary score was first computed in 2009, and the results in this report are from 2011. We have to set the record straight about the actual scores, despite what you may have read or seen on TV, notably from WBAL-TV (Baltimore’s NBC affiliate) or in the headline of a Washington Examiner story on Friday.
The fact is, Maryland students’ vocabulary scores were not significantly different from the scores in 2009. All reports about actual gains are just “spin.” There’s no there, there. Recommended reading for better understanding: Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail but Some Don’t (New York: Penguin, 2012) 🙂
The vocabulary scores only increased for fourth graders in Pennsylvania. No other state or jurisdiction showed statistically significant gains in either fourth or eighth grade. On the contrary, fourth graders in Arkansas, Indiana, and Iowa and eighth graders in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania scored significantly lower in 2011 than they did in 2009.
Maryland teachers are still working hard to develop vocabulary skills.
“We strive every day, beginning in kindergarten all the way to fifth grade, to have our students really focus on what the word means. Whether through movement, through hands-on games, play with them or through games, or through rhymes, kids are concentrated on what the word means,” WBAL-TV quoted one Maryland elementary school principal as saying.
And despite the minor misinformation, there’s still good news for Maryland schools about the vocabulary scores: Since vocabulary score is significantly correlated with reading comprehension scores on the NAEP, the fact that Maryland’s fourth graders achieved the fourth-highest average score in the nation and eighth graders tied for 14th bodes well for Marylanders’ performance in reading.
Note: The two scores aren’t exactly independent of each other, but still, it’s good to know reading comprehension is related to the size of students’ vocabulary.
On the reading comprehension test, only Maryland and Rhode Island showed significant gains in both fourth- and eighth-grade scores compared to reading comprehension scores in 2009. These results had been previously reported.
Misunderstanding on the part of TV reporters is understandable, given the misrepresentations in a press release from the Maryland State Department of Education, which said, in the second paragraph:
NAEP, a federal program known as the Nation’s Report Card, found that Maryland Grade 4 vocabulary scores increased from 223 to 226 between 2009 and 2011, while Grade 8 scores jumped from 266 to 269. The national average for Grade 4 was 217, while the national average for Grade 8 was 263, and neither of those scores improved between 2009 and 2011.
The red words, “increased” and “jumped,” indicate that MSDE has a slight misunderstanding about the report from NAEP. Those words mislead reporters a little and, once again, sugar-coat school data. This practice of conveying inaccurate representations to the public about the statistical flatline in the official report has got to stop.
Furthermore, the misdirection of our focus to something that is insignificant takes our focus away from what is significant about the achievement of Maryland students, conveyed at the end of the paragraph.
NAEP reported that Maryland vocabulary scores, in both fourth and eighth grades, are above the national average. Plus, as reported previously, Maryland was one of only two states to show significant gains in reading comprehension, again in both fourth and eighth grades, between 2009 and 2011.
“The new NAEP analysis provides another indication that we are on the right track with Maryland public education, but we have not reached our destination,” said State Superintendent of Schools Lillian Lowery in the press release. “Our goal is to prepare our high school graduates for their next chapter in life, and a strong vocabulary is a big part of that. We must continue to improve, as well as to cut down on the gaps in achievement between certain groups of Maryland students.”
Skipping the fact that the vocabulary data is for fourth and eighth grades, not high school, Dr Lowery had some nice things to say about Maryland’s public schools. Words + Rules = Language, as MIT cognitive scientist Steven Pinker wrote, so the connection between vocabulary and the “next chapter in life” is particularly fitting: language plays a strong role in every field and in our relationships.
The “achievement gaps” she’s talking about are those NAEP tracks. One gap is between white and black students, for example, which was 28 points on reading comprehension in grade 4 in favor of white students. The value is not any better than it was in 1992. That is, it is statistically unchanged. Gaps between white and Hispanic students and between students who receive free or reduced-price lunch and those who don’t in grade 4 reading comprehension were also unchanged since 1992. None of the gaps got any narrower in eighth-grade reading comprehension, either.
So while the average Maryland student reads better than the average American student, there’s still work to do, and Dr Lowery correctly acknowledges that in the release. It’s just too bad she received inaccurate reports that Maryland students had shown gains in vocabulary, which caused her to taint her well-deserved praise with inaccuracies.