State proficiency standards vary.

State proficiency standards vary. ACCORDING TO according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. THE AUTHORS of "The Proficiency Illusion," anew report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the NorthwestEvaluation Association (NWEA NWEA Northwest Evaluation AssociationNWEA National Wood Energy Association ), those who care about strengthening U.S.K12 education "should be furious." The study outlines the variation of difficulty in state tests underthe federal No Child Left Behind law and finds that the degree ofvariance is so high--not just between states but between grade levels atindividual schools--that results on the state tests are creating a falseimpression of success, particularly in reading and in the early grades. The report's primary findings are alarming. They include:state tests vary greatly in their difficulty; most state tests have notchanged in difficulty in recent years; improvements in passing rates onstate tests can largely be explained by declines in the difficulty ofthose tests; mathematics tests are consistently more difficult to passthan reading tests; and eighth-grade tests are consistently anddramatically more difficult to pass than those in earlier grades (takinginto account obvious differences in subject-matter complexity andchildren's academic development). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To compare proficiency standards across states and against auniform scale, the report used a mapping exercise to project state"cut scores," or the level needed to pass the test for NCLB NCLB No Child Left Behind (US education initiative),onto the scale used by the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), acomputer adaptive test used by all states except West Virginia West Virginia,E central state of the United States. It is bordered by Pennsylvania and Maryland (N), Virginia (E and S), and Kentucky and, across the Ohio R., Ohio (W).Facts and FiguresArea, 24,181 sq mi (62,629 sq km). Pop. . The NWEAresearchers used the point on state tests at which 70 percent of thestudy group performed at or above the cut score and compared it to thepoint on the MAP scale that was met or exceeded by 70 percent of thestudy group. The report's authors say the decision to use the MAP test overthe National Assessment of Educational Progress The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as "the Nation's Report Card," is the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. (NAEP NAEP National Assessment of Educational ProgressNAEP National Association of Environmental ProfessionalsNAEP National Association of Educational ProgressNAEP National Agricultural Extension PolicyNAEP Native American Employment Program ) was made becauseNAEP tests are only given at grades four, eight and twelve, and do notreport individual- or school-level results, which raise questions aboutthe degree of motivation students bring to the assessment. The MAPexamination, on the other hand, reports individual results to parentsand is used by school systems for both instructional and accountabilitypurposes, so there are incentives for students to perform well. The MAPis also aligned to individual states' curriculum standards andcalibrated cal��i��brate?tr.v. cal��i��brat��ed, cal��i��brat��ing, cal��i��brates1. To check, adjust, or determine by comparison with a standard (the graduations of a quantitative measuring instrument): to a uniform scale, according to John Cronin The name John Cronin corresponds to five men of note in four countries: AustraliaJohn Cronin was the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, from 1909 to 1923. , an NWEAresearch specialist and one of the report's authors. The complete report is available at www.edexcellence.net/institute.