Scores reveal students’ lag in vocabulary

Arkansas’ results listed at, below national average

— Arkansas public-school students typically earned vocabulary scores at or below national averages on the reading sections of the 2009 and 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

The National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for what is also called the Nation’s Report Card, on Thursday released the state and national vocabulary results for fourth- and eighthgraders in 2009 and 2011, and for 12th-graders in 2009.

The vocabulary report — the first prepared by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics to measure how well students use words to comprehend what they read — found large achievement gaps across the nation among test-takers of different racial, ethnic and economic groups.

The disparities were no different in Arkansas, where white students and students from affluent families scored 22-36 points higher than the average scores earned by black and Hispanic students and students from low-income families.

“The NAEP scores show that we have work to do,” Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said Thursday.

Arkansas fourth-graders scored at the national average of 217 in 2009 but the state average fell to 213 in 2011 — while the national average held steady. The tests are scored on a scale of zero to 500.

Arkansas was one of only three states, along with Indiana and Iowa, to lose ground in fourth grade, according the national report.

Arkansas eighth-graders earned an average vocabulary score of 256 in 2009 and 257 in 2011, compared with 263 for both years for the nation.

At the 12th grade, only 11 states participated in the study. Arkansas and Florida were the only two states of the 11 to score below the national average of 294. Arkansas’ average of 283 was the lowest of the group.

About 2,900 of Arkansas’ 72,000 fourth- and eighthgraders participated in the assessments, state Education Department officials said Thursday.

The national reading assessment is given every other year in fourth and eighth grades and only to a representative sample of students in each state. As a result, there are no school-by-school results because not all schools are selected to participate in the tests and not all students at a participating school are tested.

The 12th-grade reading test is given every four years.

Kimbrell said the Arkansas Benchmark Exam, which is administered yearly to all third-through-eighth-grade students, includes vocabulary, but specific scoring for vocabulary is not done on the Benchmark. As a result, Arkansas Benchmark results can’t be compared in a meaningful way with the national results.

The report on the state’s performance in regard to vocabulary “reinforces our decision to adopt the Common Core State Standards and a new common assessment system, which will allow for a better comparison among states,” Kimbrell said.

Most states — including Arkansas — are phasing in new national standards in math and English/language arts. Once the standards are fully in place and are the basis for lessons taught in the classroom, new tests based on those standards will replace the Benchmark Exam.

Questions on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test in 2009 and 2011 asked how particular words contribute to meaning in reading selections. Test-takers had to identify the meaning of words as they were used in the context of the reading selections.

“Without a strong vocabulary, any child’s ability to read and to learn suffers dramatically,” David Dirscoll, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, said in a statement about the latest report.

“Helping students improve their vocabulary and use words in the proper context is essential to improving overall reading ability — especially for students who most need to improve,” he said.

The report found that there was a consistent relationship between high achievement in reading and high achievement in vocabulary. Students who scored above the 75th percentile in reading in 2011 also had the highest average vocabulary scores, according to the report. Students scoring below the 25th percentile had the lowest average vocabulary scores.

Arkansas, Pages 11 on 12/07/2012

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