Clean Up NAEP Variations Before Giving It More Work

The NY Times editorial page jumps into education waters with this strangely mis-timed clunker on national testing (Test and Switch).  In it, the Times calls for various baby steps towards a rigorous and comparable national test -- a NAEP-created test offered to states, a national list of states using weak homegrown versions.  That's all well and good, I suppose, except for the fact that NAEP is having its own uniformity and rigor problems.  According to the NY Sun and... no one else ...  some districts are handing out NAEP accommodations like those cheap Frisbees they give out when a new bank branch opens on the corner. Maybe NAEP should handle that one before we give it a broader scope of work?  Or maybe I just woke up on the wrong side again.