Education reformers were disappointed two weeks ago to learn that fourth graders’ math scores failed to show any improvement this year. But a new report being released today by the National Center for Education Statistics reveals an equally disappointing improvement: states are getting much better at watering down the standards used on their annual math and reading tests. Or as Grover J. Whitehurst, former director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, put it, “States are getting better at gaming the system, but the kids aren’t getting any smarter.”

A little background: when George Bush pushed through his education-reform initiative, No Child Left Behind, one of its key accountability components was the mandate for annual tests in reading and math. Because of resistance to a national test, the feds agreed to a political compromise: states could develop their own tests to monitor their students’ progress and assess the effectiveness of their reform efforts. The hope—or depending on your point of view, the fantasy—was that states would develop rigorous tests based on high standards with the goal of motivating schools to work harder to improve student achievement and close the gap between black and white test scores. Every year, they were required to report how many of their students passed the test and which schools showed year-to-year progress. However, a few years later, when NCES researchers started comparing states’ efforts in 2003 to 2005, they discovered that some states had created tests that were a lot easier to pass than others. The motive? By lowering the bar, states could increase the number of their students passing their tests—and create the illusion that their schools were improving, even when they were not. This strategy didn’t benefit kids, but it sure reduced the political pressure on school administrators. The publicity that resulted from the NCES report was supposed to shame states into making improvements. Instead, as this latest NCES report reveals, when researchers updated their review by comparing 2005 standards to those used in 2007, they found that twice as many standards had been weakened in the interim as were strengthened.

Among the report's highlights:

• Wyoming, which had some of the nation’s highest standards for fourth- and eighth-grade proficiency in reading and math, diluted them all by 2007 to something closer to average. Maine did something similar.
• In 2005, Oklahoma’s reading and math standards were rated easier than average; by 2007, they decreased the rigor even more, making all their tests among the easiest to pass in the nation, and below the national standard of “basic” achievement.
• In 2007, Tennessee had the distinction of having the lowest standards in the country in eighth-grade reading, and in fourth- and eighth-grade math.
• Mississippi had the easiest test to pass in fourth-grade reading, followed by Oklahoma and Tennessee.
• North Carolina, which has long held itself out as a leader in education reform, had among the lowest standards in fourth- and eighth-grade reading.
• States that had set their test standards below the basic level in fourth-grade reading and math were Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Those that scored below basic in eighth-grade reading and math included Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
• Not all the news was bad. South Carolina was the only state to develop a fourth-grade reading test that met national standards for “proficient” achievement. South Carolina and Massachusetts were the only two states to create eighth-grade math tests that met the same high standard. Massachusetts also created the most rigorous fourth-grade math test in the country; South Carolina, the toughest eighth-grade reading test. Missouri’s tests were consistently among the top as well.
• To put the effects of these weakened standards into perspective, consider this: Arizona and Minnesota both announced that 66 percent of their fourth graders had earned a “proficient” rating on their reading tests. However, based on national standards developed for the National Assessment of Education Progress, only 24 percent of Arizona’s students and 37 percent of Minnesota’s would have earned that kind of rating.

This latest study will no doubt increase pressure for a standards and testing overhaul. "I think this is going to create more displeasure with the current system, and more of an appetite for common standards, with the caveat that they be high standards," said Amber Winkler, research director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The group most likely to benefit from this growing sentiment: the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a joint effort by the National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The two groups' stated goal is to create a rigorous common core of standards for English and math for grades K-12 that are aligned with college and career paths. While states have long been resistant to federally dictated school standards, most of the 50 states have already agreed to work on this state-led effort that will indisputably move the country closer to national standards. The U.S. Department of Education is supporting the effort by proposing that states that win a piece of the $4.35 billion federal Race to the Top fund will need to embrace the new standards movement and work toward the development of new tests that align with them.