While it looked like the number of students scoring at the lowest level dropped by over 12%, the reality was more complicated. 

“Comparing 2023 to 2024 is challenging,” David Johns, an associate superintendent, . In conjunction with the unveiling of new standards last year, the state for proficiency and performance levels. Below basic became “developing” and basic, “approaching.” 

“It’s not exactly apples to oranges, but it’s like apples to apple juice,” he said.

Wisconsin isn’t the only state that recently instituted changes that effectively boost proficiency rates. Oklahoma and recently made similar adjustments. lowered passing or “cut” scores in reading and math last year, while and are considering such revisions.

Changing standards and proficiency targets is a routine process for states that some say offers a reflection of what students know. But given the cataclysmic effects of COVID on student learning, experts say now is not the time to tweak how we measure performance. 

“Many parents are already underestimating the degree to which their children are ,” said Tom Kane, a Harvard researcher who has been tracking students’ recovery from COVID learning loss. “Lowering the proficiency cuts now will mislead them further.”  

Even Jill Underly, Wisconsins’s education chief, confessed to some bewilderment about the process last year.

“The crummy thing is, I am an educator and I don’t understand it — so how are parents supposed to understand this too?” she wrote in a June 2023 email. “For example, what does Proficient mean vs. Advanced? That they are at grade level vs. the next grade level? I just hate this stuff so much.”

The conservative Institute for Reforming Government, which obtained the email through a public records request and shared it with ����Ӱ��, is pushing the state to level with parents about poor student performance in the aftermath of COVID. 

Shifting the goal posts “sends a message that we are accepting post-pandemic levels for student performance and shows a lack of belief in every student,” said Quinton Klabon, the think tank’s senior research director.

Chris Bucher, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, said Underly’s comments show she was “doing her job” by asking the department’s experts tough questions in an effort to make the complex calculations more transparent. To help explain the changes, the department released a of how it altered standards and cut scores. 

‘An outlier’

The scoring changes in Wisconsin and other states are likely to fuel fresh criticism of the “honesty gap” — the chasm between the disparate, conflicting measures states use to determine student progress and the , uniform standard for proficiency set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. 

Known as the Nation’s Report Card, NAEP defines proficiency as “solid academic performance” and “competency over challenging subject matter.” It’s a higher bar than merely being on grade level and one that has long triggered debate. Education researcher Tom Loveless, formerly with the Brookings Institution, calls it “,” and one of international tests showed that many students in high-performing countries couldn’t reach it.

But it’s a goal many states were striving toward just prior to the pandemic, when several commentators first about the “honesty gap,” and one some experts think states shouldn’t abandon. 

“It is the only common yardstick that is available to compare student achievement across states and across the large urban districts,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP. “From the board’s perspective, standards are not going to be lower for [kids] when they enter college or the world of work.”

Frustrated with test standards in New York, Ashara Baker, a Rochester mother and state director of the National Parents Union, created her on student outcomes. While she included state data, broken down by race, she also cited NAEP proficiency rates as a comparison.

“When you’re lowering these cut scores, clearly the goal is to show some sort of growth,” she said. “But I think we’re getting away from the actual goal of why we do assessments. They should really demonstrate where kids are struggling or where there is a gap.” 

Christy Hovanetz, a senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd, a think tank, added that unlike grades on assignments and homework, state assessments should provide parents “objective” information on how their children are doing. Schools also use them to determine which students are eligible for extra help. Lowering the bar, she said, means some students who need aid might not get it.  

“These assessments are how we help identify students for extra support and assistance,” she said. “Now there will be a lot of kids that aren’t going to be getting those high-dosage tutoring sessions or who aren’t going to be getting that additional support in math that they might need.”

As with most states, New York’s threshold for proficiency lines up with NAEP’s basic level, defined as “partial mastery” of fundamental knowledge and skills, according to a from the National Center for Education Statistics. The report showed that at the time, Wisconsin had some of the toughest standards for reading and math in the country, which meant that a higher percentage of students fell short compared with other states.

That made Wisconsin “an outlier” Bucher said. 

“Our previous test scores made it appear kids were performing worse on standardized assessments than they actually were,” he said. “We listened to a group of experts — educators who are in the classroom each day teaching kids — who recommended we use cuts that align to our standards and take us closer to grade-level expectations.”

Next month, NCES is expected to update its 2021 report with a new comparison of states’ proficiency cut scores and NAEP, one that is likely to renew criticism of the way states measure student performance. 

“States that have been more ambitious are now sticking out like sore thumbs,” Klabon said. “It’s kind of a race to the bare minimum, rather than a race to the top.”

‘A sense of urgency’

One state that is choosing to stick out is Virginia. Rather than calling it unrealistic, the state, under Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, is hoping to reach the ambitious NAEP standard.

The governor to the honesty gap in 2022, announcing sweeping changes to the state’s testing regimen that include stricter standards, assessments and cut scores. A new , which takes effect in 2025-26, is expected to label a majority of schools off track or in need of “intensive support.” 

“We are not telling parents, students, teachers, policymakers and citizens the truth about where our children really are on mastering content,” state education Secretary Aimee Guidera told ����Ӱ��. “Why isn’t there a sense of urgency?”

The 2021 NCES report showed that Virginia had the lowest standards for proficiency in reading. Virginia education officials pin its poor showing on decisions made by previous Democratic governors. In 2014, under former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the state passed a law requiring students to . And under former Gov. Ralph Northam, the State Board of Education in reading and math.

accuse the Youngkin administration of fueling a negative perception of schools in order to  private school choice, including education savings accounts, which in the state legislature last year. 

Virginia saw the largest decline in the nation in fourth grade reading on the 2022 NAEP test, dropping from an average score of 224 to 214. But 32% of students were proficient — same as the national average. On several other , including the SAT and exam, Virginia students have historically ranked near the top.

Advancing school choice was a “mandate for Youngkin and he has pursued it with dogged determination,” said Cheryl Binkley, president of 4PublicEducation, a Virginia advocacy group. He has appointed school choice advocates to the state board, she said, and pledged to increase the number of .

But Guidera points to increases in and over $400 million the state provided to as evidence that leaders aren’t trying to “tear down” public schools.

Under a different Republican administration in Oklahoma, the opposite scenario is playing out. As ����Ӱ�� reported last month, the state education department, led by Superintendent Ryan Walters, made its state tests less challenging, especially in reading. In third grade, for example, 51% of students scored proficient or better, compared to 29% last year. 

Richard Cobb, superintendent of the Mid-Del district, near Oklahoma City, said district leaders know student performance has improved, but the department’s changes had the effect of artificially inflating the magnitude of the gains.

The move represented a break from work led by Walters’s predecessor, Joy Hofmeister, to align the state with NAEP’s stronger proficiency targets. In 2017, over 70% of students on average were performing at the proficient level through elementary and middle school on state tests, but only a quarter went on to earn a competitive score on the ACT test in 11th grade.

“The whole idea was trying to get an honest indicator of student readiness as early as third grade when kids start testing,” said Maria D’Brot, a former deputy superintendent in Oklahoma who traveled across the state with Hofmeister to explain the honesty gap to local superintendents. 

Their message wasn’t well received.

“Joy’s adjustment to the cut scores was wildly unpopular and demoralizing,” said Cobb, who has led the district since 2015. “NAEP should not be our target, and many superintendents told her that.”

But in the summer of 2017, 121 educators met at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City to determine tougher cut points for each performance level. Just as the public, plummeted. The in third grade reading, for example, dropped from 72% to 39%.

Hofmeister, who was reelected in 2018, remains proud of that work, which she said would make students better prepared for college and a competitive job market.

“I remember feeling like this is worth it if it means I’m a one termer,” she said. 

While Hofmeister occasionally led the polls in the weeks before the election, the race wasn’t close on Tuesday night. The Associated Press called the race for Stitt, with unofficial results showing the incumbent with 56% of the vote. 

“This hard-fought election has proven that Oklahomans with different political perspectives can carve a path built on common sense, respect for one another and working hand-in-hand to get things done,” Hofmeister . She congratulated Stitt and said she would “work with him in whatever capacity I’m able.”

With Stitt’s appointed education secretary Ryan Walters for state superintendent, the governor has a unified front to push forward on his agenda to create  and restrict lessons on race and gender. Stitt’s school choice plan —  allowing state education funds to flow directly to families to spend at private schools — became a defining issue in the race. Stitt said parents should be able to escape low-performing schools, and blamed Hofmeister for a lack of improvement during her tenure.

Hofmeister, meanwhile, argued that his proposal would wipe out rural schools that anchor their communities. 

Hofmeister won two terms as a Republican state superintendent. In switching parties last year, she picked up some support from those who view Stitt as too far right and question his integrity.

A  little over a week before the election, former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts appeared in a supporting Hofmeister. 

“I was a Republican then, and I’m a Republican now, and, friends, I’m voting for Joy Hofmeister,” Watts said in the video. “All this scandal and corruption is just too much. Joy is a woman of faith and integrity. She’ll always put Oklahoma first. I know Joy personally, and I trust her, and you can too.”

While charges of corruption dogged Stitt during the campaign, the accusations proved not damaging enough to cost him the election. The governor’s relationship with the owner of a barbeque restaurant chain has been because of a contract the company received for renovating restaurants in state parks. The head of the state’s tourism agency after a legislative investigation found overspending on the projects. 

In another case, found that the state mishandled $650,000 in federal COVID relief funds when the company it hired to oversee a grant program for low-income families approved expenses for items such as video games and Christmas trees. 
Stitt about those issues in recent interviews and attributed the accusations to “special interests trying to buy this election.”