GUEST COLUMN, Dave Trabert, Kansas Policy Institute
State education administrators often say, “It’s all about the kids,” yet their actions suggest it’s more about protecting adult reputations than improving student outcomes.
They all want students to do better, but not if it means adults changing their behavior to make it happen. The most recent example of this is lowering the bar on proficiency standards to make it appear that achievement is improving.
Each state offers a rationale that strains credibility, reminiscent of the illusion the crooked weavers tried to pull off in The Emperor’s Clothes.
The Illinois Department of Education says that the state has been “misidentifying students as being ‘not proficient’… due to misaligned cut scores established several years ago.”
In Wisconsin, the excuse is that students “were appearing to be doing worse than they really were.”
And the Kansas Department of Education claims to be “fixing a misaligned system.”
The Oklahoma Department of Education declined to comment on the lower scores that have since been reversed. More on that shortly.
Naturally, these state departments of education deny that they are reducing rigor, but the data show otherwise.
Illinois, Kansas, and Oklahoma also made similar claims about the proficiency standard on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) being unreasonably high, and that pegging state proficiency standards to NAEP understates student performance.
NAEP Proficient “represents solid academic performance for each grade assessed. Students reaching this level have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter, including subject-matter knowledge, application of such knowledge to real-world situations, and analytical skills appropriate to the subject matter.”
Compare that to the next level down, NAEP Basic, which “denotes partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at a given grade.”
Is ‘solid academic performance’ an unreasonable expectation for students? Should ‘partial mastery’ be the mission-accomplished goal? Apparently, the education departments in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Kansas seem to think so.
NAEP compared state proficiency standards to the NAEP equivalent for proficient in 2022. Only a handful of states – including Illinois, Kansas, and Wisconsin – have proficiency standards for 8th-grade reading that are at or slightly above proficient on NAEP. Lowering the bar for state proficiency will therefore translate to Basic and partial mastery.
Wisconsin students’ proficiency in 8th-grade reading was very similar to the NAEP score until the bar was lowered. In 2019, the state assessment showed 37 percent proficient, and it was 35 percent on NAEP; both were at 32 percent in 2022. But with the bar lowered for the 2024 state assessment, proficiency jumped to 48 percent, while it stayed at 32 percent on NAEP.
Kansas also closely tracked NAEP in prior years. In 2024, the state assessment showed 22 percent of 8th-graders were proficient in reading, while 25 percent were proficient on NAEP. After lowering standards, the state Department of Education now claims 40 percent proficiency – an implausible leap.
College-readiness on ACT and SAT exams also reflects low achievement levels for each state. Their definition of college-ready is having at least a 75 percent chance of getting a “C” on an entry-level course.
The problem isn’t that standards are too high on independent tests; it’s that proficiency is shockingly low, and state education administrators want that harsh reality to disappear because looking good is more important than students being academically prepared for life after high school.
Oklahoma reverses course on low proficiency standards
The Oklahoma State Department of Education developed new cut scores in 2024, based on guideposts provided to teacher committees. Commissioner Ryan Walters said he “wanted the agency to avoid “putting a thumb on the scale,” but media reports say those guideposts suggested to the committees that they set lower expectations for student achievement on annual reading and math tests.
This was all done quietly behind the scenes. It wasn’t until news reports revealed the cut score change that the Education Department acknowledged what happened.
The 2024 proficiency gains were absurdly unbelievable, like improving from 29 percent proficient in 3rd-grade reading to 51 percent in one year. Even local school officials dismissed the results, according to media reports. Finally, after several months of outrage over the deception, the Oklahoma Commission for Educational Quality and Accountability voted unanimously to throw out performance expectations that the state set in 2024 and to restore the nationally aligned standard used from 2017 to 2023 for the 2025 school year.
Legislators in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Kansas must follow Oklahoma’s lead by rejecting diluted proficiency standards and demanding transparency and real progress, and legislators nationwide should reject efforts to quietly lower the bar.
Editor’s Note: This column was also published at The Hill
