Myth: No Child Left Behind has caused states to lower standards in a
“race to the bottom” so that all their children will be counted as proficient.

Conventional wisdom is that No Child Left Behind has had the unintended consequence of causing states to lower the standards by which they consider students proficient so that they look better than they are.
            It is conventional wisdom, but is it correct?
            The evidence is mixed and some of it confusing.
            Most people who pay attention to this sort of thing agree that most states have standards that are pretty dismal. The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, the American Federation of Teachers, and other watchdog organizations have generally dim views of most state standards. The Fordham Foundation, which is one of the biggest proponents of the “race-to-the-bottom” theory, says that since No Child Left Behind some states – such as Florida and Hawaii – have slid backwards in providing their students with clear and ambitious standards. (See What’s New for more information.)
            In addition, the Fordham Foundation says that many states have lowered their “cut scores” – that is, states have said that students can answer fewer questions correctly on state assessments and still count as proficient.
            It is certainly true that some states have done exactly that. Washington State, for example, changed its cut score in a small way for high school students and in a bigger way for seventh graders in 2005. Arizona made big changes in 2005 in an unfortunate and ill-advised effort to boost proficiency rates without boosting student learning. Press reports indicate that Illinois has lowered its cut scores in middle school math, but official word is hard to come by.
            Missouri also lowered its middle and high school cut scores in 2006, but it should be acknowledged as a special case. Its cut scores had been so high that a lower percentage of Missouri kids scored at the proficient level on state tests than scored at the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Missouri said it was bringing its standards into line with NAEP. It will take a year or so to be sure that that’s what it did, but with most states having standards way below NAEP, it can hardly be said that Missouri is “racing to the bottom.”
            It should probably be mentioned that, concurrent with No Child Left Behind, Maryland went from a very high-level test requiring analysis and a good deal of writing to a more conventional test that was easier. But Maryland’s change in tests was only partly in response to NCLB. The bigger reason for the change had to do with complaints that the earlier, more sophisticated, test took too long to score and didn’t properly calibrate progress because the standard for proficiency was set so high.
            In  addition, many states, to comply with No Child Left Behind’s requirement of testing every grade from third through eighth grade and once in high school, have added quite a few tests in the last year or two. If they had been testing in third, fifth, and eight grades, for example, they added fourth, sixth, and seventh grades. In the rush to add the tests it is very difficult to tell where their standards are.
            So that’s the main case for the race-to-the-bottom theory, and it has some evidence on its side.
            But in any discussion like this it should be said that some states have strengthened their standards. The Fordham Foundation itself says that California, Indiana, and Massachusetts have all set clear and well-developed standards, all of them improving from 2000, the last time Fordham did such a survey.
            In addition, the District of Columbia dramatically increased its standards by adopting the standards of Massachusetts. Georgia began a process of raising its standards and adopting new assessments that are aligned with those more rigorous standards in 2005.
            And, on the cut-score front, Arkansas raised its cut scores in 2005 and Texas has been steadily raising its cut scores over the years, including in 2006. Delaware changed quite a few of its cut scores, raising some and lowering others, depending on the test and grade level.
            In other words, there does not appear to have been a wholesale lowering of standards since 2001. The picture is fairly mixed, and states that take seriously the question of whether their students are being prepared for college and the work place are not lowering standards but raising them.
            All of this is reason to appreciate NAEP as a “keep-them-honest” check on state standards and assessments. NAEP is considered something of the gold standard of assessments but until No Child Left Behind took effect NAEP was only given in states that volunteered. Now it is mandatory and given to a sample of children in every state. By comparing the percentage of children scoring at the proficient level on NAEP to the percentage of children scoring at the proficient level on state tests, we can get some idea of whether state standards match the standards in NAEP.
            In many states the percentage of children who score at the proficient level on state tests is closer to the percentage of children who score at the basic level on NAEP, which means that those states have much lower standards than NAEP.
            The thing to remember, though, is that in the vast majority of cases, those lower standards predated No Child Left Behind and in fact have not been much affected one way or another by the federal law.