You Can Lead Adolescents to a Test but You Can't Make Them Try

摘要

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) estimates the number ofstudents who are more likely to do certain problems right than other students. NAEP reports the numbers, briefly describes the problems and says more students need to do these problems right. The press largely reports the news as presented. Reporters are not usually investigators, and news media are not referred journals, so they do not conduct their own reviews to see if NAEP reports are right. More lead time for reporters, and having each NAEP report give a clear summary of the limitations of the data, would help improve coverage. However the limitations of the data are significant, especially lack of student motivation, and difficulty in describing the knowledge shown by students. These weaken the author's ability to draw conclusions from NAEP results.