View the press release here.
For Immediate Release
February 5, 2025
NAEP Scores Are A Problematic Measurement For Alaska’s Students
DEED sent out a press release on Wednesday, January 29th implying that Alaska’s state test scores have dropped across the board and that increased funding to districts would not improve student performance.
This is an inaccurate portrayal of the scores and requires not only clarification but a rebuttal.
NAEP is a problematic measurement, because the sample population is so small in rural schools that data is not statistically significant. NAEP scores come from a sample set of schools, and not every school is tested. For example, the Petersburg School District tends to score well above the state average, but was excluded from the 2024 NAEP testing cohort; had Petersburg been included, the overall state score may have looked different.
In addition, the students assessed in 2024 were completely different from those assessed in 2022 (different schools, different students). The test is inherently a poor indication of the entire picture of Alaska academics.
Because NAEP compares different schools and different students year-to-year, the scores do not show improvement of cohorts - which is the precise “performance metric” that the Governor implies that he is looking for.
Testing the same grade across different schools and cohorts does not show whether students grow and improve. The MAP scores, which are available to publicly view on the DEED website, show consistent and measurable growth across grades.
The Alaska NAEP scorecard shows that there was no significant improvement or decline in fourth grade scores compared to 2022. The gap between national and Alaska fourth grade reading scores did not change over the two years. However, the national average in fourth grade math did improve significantly and thereby widen the gap between Alaska and the nation. Eighth graders fell more than half of a year of learning in two years. This gap grew because Alaska scores fell faster than nationally and they showed a drop over two years.
A bigger question remains: How many of the students tested in Alaska were being taught by a teacher with an emergency certification or an international exchange teacher?
In the Lower 48, it is probably very rare to have a teacher teaching a NAEP subject (ELA or Math) that is not highly qualified to teach it, yet in Alaska some teachers teaching those subjects only have an endorsement, because the pool of certificated teachers has diminished so significantly.
Commissioner Bishop has made it public last week that we are seeing growth in our early elementary scores, yet the Governor continues to insist that more money won’t help. Districts need funds to be able to pay for additional staff to focus on the Reads Act mandates as well as to meet all of those communication requirements, not just to keep the lights on.
