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The next chair of the governing board that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress standardized test is a Tennessee lawmaker at the center of some of the state’s most contentious education battles.
Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis) will lead the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the NAEP, known as “the nation’s report card.” The test measures reading and math proficiency for fourth and eighth graders every two years, among other subjects.
White’s appointment comes at a critical juncture for the testing program. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has promised that the main NAEP test will be protected, even as the federal government has canceled some auxiliary tests and fired most of the staff at the Education Department’s research arm, which also supported the test.
Democrats and Republicans have questioned the value of standardized testing even as researchers say NAEP provides the best benchmark for whether students are learning critical skills.
The Trump administration and conservative education advocates have seized on dismal NAEP scores to argue that public schools are failing students, even as not enough private schools opt into the test to provide reliable data. Which students are included in the testing sample is an increasingly important question, as school choice means more students are learning somewhere other than a traditional public school.
But White told Chalkbeat that NAEP is “highly needed” as the federal government pushes more control over education to individual states.
“We need a high standard of accountability for all 50 states to make sure that each state is performing well and we can compare ourselves with each other,” he said.
In Tennessee, White chairs the influential House Education Committee and has represented his Shelby County district since 2010. He was previously a science teacher and principal at a Tennessee private school and remains a vocal advocate for increasing school choice in the state.
White said he hopes to convince more private schools to use NAEP during his tenure as chair.
“A lot of the pushback when we were trying to pass legislation to allow school choice and private schools is people saying, ‘Well, there’s no accountability with a private school,’” he said. “So if we believe, and most people do, that private schools do better than public schools, it would be nice to know that.”
White has served as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, or the NAGB, for the past five years.
He told Chalkbeat that he believes NAGB should remain “totally nonpartisan.” To help achieve that goal, White said he plans to continue urging Congress to put NAEP results back on an odd-year release schedule. The testing schedule shifted during COVID-19 lockdowns.
“During an election year, someone will use the results to come out and say, ‘Oh, well, this politically will benefit or to hurt either party,” White said. “We always wanted to keep it on odd years, because we do not want NAEP to ever become political.”
White is one of two Republican lawmakers who have been pushing to establish a state-controlled board of education to take over Memphis-Shelby County Schools. That move has received heavy pushback from MSCS leaders.
Chalkbeat National Editor Erica Meltzer contributed to this story.
Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.
