Today is Part 2 of our special three-part newsblast stemming from NJ’s Joint Committee on Public Schools hearing on student achievement and school performance. Part 1 available here.
Yesterday, we focused on the Good. But it wasn’t all good. Today we focus on…
The Bad
Economists have a name for claims that refuse to die despite repeated debunking: "zombie ideas." Education has its own graveyard full of them, and the October 13 hearing raised one from the dead.
The line went like this. Rowan math professor Dr. Eric Milou called the state test "a one-day snapshot" and said young test takers just "click, click, click." He also argued kids are tested on algebra skills "they will never use." Lavallette Superintendent Dr. Lisa Gleason warned against relying on "any one report, any one data set." Moorestown Superintendent Dr. Courtney McNeely called standardized tests "a metric, not the metric."
Some of this may sound reasonable on its face. But look beneath the mask, and just like Scooby-Doo, you’ll find bad faith acting.
Test scores tell you where a child is right now
The NJSLA is built on New Jersey's own learning standards. A child who doesn't meet expectations on the 4th-grade math test tells us something specific and simple: the student hasn't mastered 4th-grade math. That's not a mystery. It's a diagnosis.
And it's not one outlier day of poor test-taking. When most New Jersey students fall short of proficiency in math, year after year, that's not a bad Tuesday. When results are mirrored across benchmark assessments, annual state assessments, graduation tests, and college readiness exams, that’s a pattern.
Test scores tell you where a child is headed
Chad Aldeman put it plainly to the committee: researchers have found that a student who does poorly on a 3rd-grade math test is unlikely to rebound by 8th grade or high school – in fact, that student typically falls further behind. Math is cumulative. Weak number sense becomes weak fractions, which become a failed algebra class, which becomes a remedial course at Rutgers that costs money and earns no credit.
The same is true at the other end of the pipeline. A 2024 Opportunity Insights study from Harvard, Brown and Dartmouth researchers found SAT and ACT scores were roughly four times more predictive of first-year college grades than high school GPA. A perfect 4.0 predicted barely a tenth of a point more in college than a 3.2 grade point average. Dartmouth's own faculty review pointed to grade inflation as the reason GPA has lost its signal.
Grades and scores: you need both
Here's what the "just one metric" crowd leaves out: nobody is asking parents to look at a test score instead of a report card. We're asking them to look at both.
When a child brings home an A in Algebra and scores "Partially Meeting Expectations" on the state algebra test, that mismatch is the most valuable piece of information a parent can get. Aldeman calls it the parent perception gap: families see good grades and assume all is well. Then their honor-roll student lands in remedial math three months after graduation.
Moorestown Superintendent Dr. Courtney McNeely made a similar point, perhaps without meaning to: when a student earns an A but can't independently demonstrate essential skills, "I want to understand why." So do we. That question only gets asked because the test exists.
The witnesses who warned against relying on "one measure" were right. That's exactly why throwing out the state test makes no sense. Ignore state test results, and the report card becomes the only measure left.
