The title of this entry is a mouthful, I know.
But they’re all topics scheduled to be discussed next week by the board that sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. The meeting of the National Assessment Governing Board is scheduled for Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 20-22, to be held just outside Washington.
On Thursday afternoon at 2 p.m., the board will continue its discussion of policies to allow students to be excluded from, or received special accommodations, on NAEP tests. States follow their own exam policies right now, and as a result, the percentage of students not tested, or given extra help, varies tremendously, leading to skepticism about the value of the scores. The governing board has been looking at solutions. But as I’ve reported, they’re not easy to find.
Then on Friday afternoon at 1:30 p.m., the board will hear separate presentations on how it could incorporate ideas of college and workforce “preparedness” in designing the NAEP. Later that afternoon, there’s a discussion of the role of international benchmarking, which has received a lot of attention in recent years amid concerns of U.S. students’ performance on nation-by-nation exams.
The meeting will be held at the Westin Arlington Gateway Hotel, 801 North Glebe Road, in Arlington, Va. Most of the sessions (and all of the ones mentioned above) are open to the public.