Too Good to Be True? LAUSD’s Reading Scores Bucked a National Trend.
School districts across the country fared poorly on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 2022. One outlier was the Los Angeles Unified School District, where eighth graders boasted a 9-point increase in reading scores over 2019. Was it luck, merit, or a data error?
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho had choice words for those who doubt the validity of LAUSD’s exceptional numbers.
“When the validity of released ‘gold standard’ #NAEP data, after the detailed due diligence conducted to ensure it, is questioned, you might as well question sea-level rise, global warming, or gravity for that matter; then again some of these voices probably do just that.”
But it’s easy to see why the skepticism exists. On average, eighth grade reading scores in urban districts dropped 3 points. Out of the 26 urban districts nationwide, LAUSD was the only one that saw improvement in 2022.
In response to the doubters, the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP, analyzed LAUSD’s scores. It found no problems with the methodology and could not find any factors that would skew the data. The American Institutes for Research then replicated the results at the Center’s request. It too found no flaws.
Read more at EdSource.
