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03/03/2006:

"Students Testing Worse on Federal Exams"

WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's students do glaringly worse on a tough federal test than they do on state exams in reading and math, raising doubts about how much kids are learning.

The number of children who were proficient or better on state exams was often solid, if not lofty, in 2005. States have wide latitude in deciding what proficiency means.

But on the National Assessment of Educational Progress - the gold-standard measure of achievement in the U.S. - most states don't come close to matching up, a new analysis shows.

The performance gap was often enormous. The number of fourth-graders and eighth-graders who scored proficient or better on state tests was often 30, 40 or 50 percentage points lower on the federal exam - the one the president and Congress use to chart the nation's progress.

The size of that discrepancy raises questions about whether states are setting lower standards. Congress, in fact, has required every state to take part in the federal testing for that very reason - as a way to expose states that otherwise report rosy achievement.

The Education Trust, a nonprofit think tank that tracks state compliance with the No Child Left Behind law, released the comparison of test scores in a report on Thursday.

``There ought to be questions about whether state standards are preparing students for the challenges of college, work and the real world,'' said Daria Hall, senior policy analyst at Education Trust.

Under President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, all children must be proficient in reading and math by 2014.
guardian.co.uk

or else what?