Basically, the assessment stays the same from year to year, with only carefully documented changes. This allows NAEP to offer a clear snap shot of student academic progress over time.

Just today, January 15, 2009, what was feared by many over the past several months would occur in Florida has come true. The biggest bite of budget cuts, $466 million, is to come from public school and pre-kindergarten programs. In addition, the state's higher-education programs will see about $184 million in cuts. Daytona State College, alone, will lose about $2.1 million.

Besides the immediate impacts such short-sidedness will bring in daily educational programming, is the much more devastating long-term effects. When children do not do well in second grade, that poverty of education follows them throughout all of their years of schooling, and eventually hits the state hard when the students graduate. These are the country's future leaders that are...
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