BOULDER, CO (March 18, 2025)— In this month's episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña discusses the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), educational measurement, and the federal role in education and assessment with Andrew Ho, the Charles William Elliott Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Ho, a psychometrician whose research aims to improve the design, use, and interpretation of test scores in education policy and practice, describes NAEP as "the most important test you've never heard of." He notes that programs like NAEP have historically enjoyed bipartisan support because they provide crucial information about educational progress. Ho explains that NAEP provides critical data about national- and state-level educational progress and helps answer important questions about how American students are progressing compared to previous generations.
His work with the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford, linking state-level test data with NAEP results, provides a comprehensive, nationwide view of educational opportunity from 2009 to 2024. This project allows researchers and the public to examine variations in educational progress across the country. The data point to the importance of federal efforts to improve educational opportunities for students in poverty and those with disabilities.
Ho and Saldaña discuss recent NAEP results that show students have not fully recovered from pandemic-related learning losses. Ho is especially concerned about the growth of educational inequality along socioeconomic lines. However, he cautions policymakers to resist viewing test result numbers as more meaningful, precise, and permanent than they actually are. Instead he recommends holding test numbers lightly and supplementing them with other forms of quantitative and qualitative information.
A new NEPC Talks Education podcast episode, hosted by Christopher Saldaña, will be released each month from September through May.
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