Friday, November 09, 2007

Attempting to measure educational performance by looking at improvement over time




46: Nebraska
43: Alaska, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington
42: Colorado, Indiana, New York
41: Delaware, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio
38: Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, West Virginia
37: Alabama, Oklahoma
36: Arkansas, Hawaii
35: Florida, Mississippi
34: District of Columbia









1. Nebraska
2. Illinois
3. Arizona
4. Montana
5. Kentucky
6. South Dakota
7. Oregon
8. Iowa
8. Virginia
10. Wisconsin
11. Alaska
12. Massachusetts
13. North Dakota
14. South Carolina
15. Minnesota
16. Washington
17. New York
18. Vermont
19. Colorado
20. Indiana
21. Missouri
22. New mexico
23. Nevada
24. Delaware
25. North Carolina
26. California
27. Ohio
28. Tennessee
29. Maryland
30. Rhode Island
31. Utah
32. Maine
32. Pennsylvania
34. Louisiana
35. West Virginia
36. Alabama
37. New Jersey
38. Michigan
39. Georgia
40. Connecticut
41. Idaho
42. Texas
43. District of Columbia
44. Wyoming
45. New Hampshire
46. Oklahoma
47. Hawaii
48. Kansas
49. Mississippi
50. Arkansas
51. Florida




Steve Sailer said...


How about if you looked at it separately for whites and for blacks?

Steve Sailer said...

Maybe you should measure it in standard deviation terms -- I believe there is a webpage on the NAEP site that explains their standard errors. If a state moves up, say, 0.2 standard deviations compared to the mean from 4th to 8th grade, that would be pretty good.

Then it would be interesting if the high gainers in math got that way by sacrificing gains in reading, or if they were improving in both areas.

Then, to add to your work load, you should take a look at a few years ago to see if the the high gainers are consistent or if this is just noise.

There are a lot of states where there aren't enough blacks for a reliable comparison, but every state has enough whites, so looking just at whites is good. Looking just at whites also prevents demographic change from influencing your findings. California's 4th graders are not demographically the same as its 8th graders, for example.

Audacious Epigone said...


I will, to try and tease out answers to a few of the questions I posed.

I don't see where the NAEP offers other than a standard error for each individual state's population being tested, but I'll calculate the standard deviation for state scores and look at the results that way.

Steve Sailer said...

Another wrinkle might be to look at 4th grade scores in 2003 to 8th grade scores in 2007 or whenever so you can compare roughly the same cohort.

Statsquatch said...

This is interesting. I have not looked at the data set, but is it possible to determine if there is a significant difference between any of these states in the change from 4 to 8th grade?

Audacious Epigone said...


It depends on what other variable(s) you want to look at. The table gives the change from fourth to eighth in terms of standard deviations relative to the states in their totality.