NAEP Needs to Be Kept at Arm’s Length From Politics

In a polarized time, everything tends to become political and reflexively stupid. Combating that requires a lot of things. A big one is reliable, respected facts. Well, when it comes to education, no facts are as reliable or respected as those produced by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“the nation’s report card”).

Fortunately, there has been a strong bipartisan effort, at least since the Al Gore fiasco of 1999 (more on that in a moment), to ensure that NAEP releases are buffered from political considerations and walled off from political appointees. This effort has reflected the ethos of the independent 26-member National Assessment Governing Board.

When the long-term-trend NAEP results were released for 9-year-olds in early September, a senior Department of Education political appointee was given an extended speaking slot on the

Last week, however, at the biennial NAEP report card release (pushed into this year’s election season by a pandemic-induced delay from the original fall 2021 schedule), the event at the National Press Club again featured a senior Department of Education political appointee. Earlier, the conference call to brief reporters on the embargoed results had featured extended remarks by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. In fact, the opportunity for reporters to ask questions about the results was truncated so that Cardona could speak.

Meanwhile, the internal National Center for Education Statistics landing page for the NAEP data included not only the assessment results but also a “Biden-Harris Administration Academic Recovery Strategies” document—which turned out to be mostly an assemblage of administration talking points. Whether the decision to post this document was made by staff at NCES or NAGB, and whether done voluntarily or in response to external pressure, posting it was a mistake.

My antennae have been up on this because I had an odd experience with the NAEP release. Several weeks ago, I asked (as a longtime EdWeek blogger) for routine access to the embargoed NAEP results when they were made available to the press. Eventually, my request was denied by NCES: I didn’t qualify for access because I wasn’t filing a news story on deadline. The problem? For one thing, I was indeed writing about the results, on deadline. For another, I know individuals at multiple outlets who received access even though they were not, in fact, filing news stories on deadline.

Given that I’ve been a relatively high-profile critic of the Biden Department of Education’s efforts, I can’t help but wonder if NCES’ decision to deny access was influenced by concerns about whether they risked giving offense by allowing me access to the results. Those kinds of doubts are inevitable, though, when the standards for sharing information are inconsistent and the lines between research and politics start to blur. NAEP needs to be kept well away from politics, precisely to keep such concerns from taking hold.

A moment ago, I mentioned the Al Gore fiasco. Well, back in fall 1999, when Vice President Gore was already running hard for president, he assumed the podium for the NAEP release as an opportunity to capture the news cycle and sketch his thoughts on education. After that kerfuffle, and the passage of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (which created the Institute of Education Sciences), there was a redoubled focus on avoiding a repeat.

That norm held through the Bush and Obama years. Unfortunately, in 2019, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spoke at the NAEP report card release. Amid the vicious and overheated cheap shots on DeVos, it was easy to overlook this misstep. But it was a mistake, breaching the wall that NAGB and NCES need to maintain between NAEP and political officials—even if that requires statistical wonks standing up to Department of Ed. politicos or White House minions. That means telling both Republican and Democratic officials that it’s not appropriate or useful to have them participate in the NAEP release.

As far as getting things back on track, a good place to start would be ensuring that future releases don’t occur the month before national elections. Job one should be either pushing future releases back to after Thanksgiving or getting things back on an odd-year schedule.

Look, I’ll be the first to note that we’ve got bigger problems to deal with than NAEP’s credibility (starting with the actual numbers that NAEP reported last week). But it’s easier than you’d think for even something as valuable as NAEP to get sucked into today’s all-consuming political maw, its hard-earned reputation undermined, and its findings tainted. It’s in all our interests to ensure that doesn’t happen.

As a guy who taught high school civics back in the last century, I have some admittedly old-fashioned notions about civics instruction. For instance, it may sound archaic to some, but I still think civics should entail teaching students about our political, social, and economic systems; the rights and responsibilities of citizens; and how to engage in the political process.

Apparently, all of this puts me wildly out of step with the times. At least, that’s the obvious takeaway from a new RAND Corp. survey of K-12 teachers, examining how they think about civic and citizenship education. The national study, released earlier this month, utilized questions drawn from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study.

The researchers found that few teachers seemed to believe that civic education requires teaching students about the core institutions or knowledge upon which civil society rests. Asked for the top three aims of civic education, just 23 percent of teachers said one of them is “promoting knowledge of social, political, and civic institutions.” Just 2 in 5 said a top-three aim was “promoting knowledge of citizens’ rights and responsibilities,” and just 11 percent thought a top-three priority was developing students’ capacity to defend their point of view.

I was gobsmacked by the results. I mean, I’ve always thought it fairly uncontroversial to assume that students need to know how judges get appointed or how Congress works if we expect them to be informed, engaged citizens. And I thought the whole “rights-and-responsibilities of citizens” thing was one place where we could all pretty much agree, at least in principle.

Yet, not even one-fourth of teachers rank knowledge of political and civic institutions as a top-three concern?! Not even half think promoting knowledge of citizens’ rights and responsibilities makes the top three?! Barely 1 in 10 think it’s important that students be able to articulate their beliefs?!

I honestly don’t know what to make of that. I’m tempted to blame the question wording or the survey instrument, except that the questions are pretty straightforward, and the survey has been used around the globe.

Some readers, I suspect, will say, “See, I knew it! This is a consequence of politicizing civics education.” As regular readers know, I have plenty of concerns along that line. Except, the evidence doesn’t really suggest that that’s a major factor. For instance, just 27 percent cited promoting environmental activism as a top-three aim, just 20 percent named “anti-racism,” and just 5 percent mentioned preparing students for future political engagement.

What teachers seem to be embracing instead is a notion of civics education that is largely content-free. The most frequently cited aim, offered by about two-thirds of teachers, is “promoting students’ critical and independent thinking.” The only other aim named by even half of teachers was “developing students’ skills and competencies in conflict resolution.”

I’m all for critical thinking. But critical thinking about what? Clearly, it’s not about social, political, or civic institutions; the rights-and-responsibilities of citizens; how to defend one’s beliefs; or how to engage in the political process. This is critical thinking as a pleasant-sounding placeholder. Thinking critically about pressing conflicts (much less resolving them) inevitably requires historical understanding and substantive knowledge. That seems to have gotten lost.

In an era when researchers have reported that just 26 percent of Americans can name the three branches of government or that only about 1 in 3 Americans can pass the nation’s citizenship test, the consequences of ignorance are glaring. We see the effects daily playing out on social media, in our tribal politics, and in performative civic leadership.

We desperately need civics and citizenship instruction that prepares students to do better. That means helping students cultivate the requisite knowledge, skills, and habits. But the first step, it would appear, is convincing teachers that this is worth doing.