Another hole punched in Ladner’s “Florida Ed Miracle” 4th grade scores

by David Safier

If you listen to the Goldwater Institute’s Matthew Ladner, the only test score that matters in the educational universe is the 4th grade reading score on the national NAEP exam. The reason is, that’s where Florida shines compared to other states. The fact that Florida holds back lots of its lowest performing 3rd graders, meaning those students take the 4th grade test when they are chronological 5th graders and therefore score higher than they would if they weren’t held back a year, means nothing to Ladner, even though that’s one of the main reasons Florida’s 4th graders have unusually high scores. The best analogy is, if you were comparing 4th grade students’ height state-to-state, holding back the shortest kids and taking their heights a year later would do a whole lot to raise your state’s height average.

Ladner doesn’t spend much time looking at the 8th grade NAEP scores or other data assessing the same students when they move past 4th grade, because most or all of the “Florida Education Miracle” proves itself to be a mirage that fades over time.

The NAEP Science test scores for 2009 have been released, and they go a long way toward showing once again how bogus Ladner’s obsessive use of 4th grade scores is. Florida’s 4th grade students look very strong on the Science tests. But the 8th graders show a reversal which, so far as I can tell, is far greater than in any other state.

Let’s start with this table I created from the National, Florida and Arizona results on the 2009 NAEP Science Test in the 4th and 8th grade:

Florida’s scores perform considerably better than Arizona’s in the 4th grade — 14% fewer students at Below Basic level, 4% more at Basic and 10% more at Proficient. But look how those gaps shrink in the 8th grade — 3% fewer at Below Basic, 1% more at Basic and 7% more at Proficient.

Arizona’s scores fluxuate from 4th to 8th grade pretty much like the national scores. But Florida’s do appreciably worse than the rest of the country. Florida student scores get a big bump in the 4th grade, then level off by the time they hit the 8th grade.

I limited the first table to Florida and Arizona to make it easy to read, but the next table compares the 4th to 8th grade fluxuation in 8 states.

This table shows the percentage shifts in the three categories of students from the 4th to the 8th grade, looking at national averages and 8 states.

Nationally, the number of students scoring Below Basic, the lowest category, increased 9% from 4th to 8th grade. In Florida, double that number — 18% — were added to the Below Basic category. The other states added far fewer than Florida, between 5% and 10%.

Nationally, the number of students scoring at the Basic level decreased 6%. In Florida, category decreased by 10%, about 2/3 higher than the national average. Except for Georgia, no other state in the table was more than 1% different from the national average.

I don’t put any emphasis on the changes in Proficient scores for this analysis, since those aren’t going to be affected much by Florida’s 3rd grade student retention policy.

I didn’t cherry-pick the states I used in the table, by the way. The results from the other states I looked at were similar. So far as I can tell, Florida is the national outlier, the state with the greatest downturn in scores from the 4th to the 8th grade. You can do the research yourself — 4th grade scores here and 8th grade scores here.

To sum up: Florida’s students seem to perform exceptionally well in the 4th grade compared to other states, but their achievement falls way off as they move up the grades. Add on the fact that Florida has a tradition of very low high school graduation rates, and there is little left to Florida’s claim of educational exceptionalism.

For Ladner, Florida’s 4th grade reading scores are his bread and butter. His “Florida Education Miracle” dog-and-pony show, which he is now taking around the country, is what earns him his $150,000+ salary. And because, like any good snake oil saleman, he’s got his sales pitch down to an art, suckers in the legislatures and the media are buying his educational patent medicine by the state-load.