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Notes -
How are proficiency standards determined for K-12 education?
I've tried looking it up a couple of times, after seeing a lot of angst about how less than half of students are proficient in reading or math, and have only found super vague verbiage like "The achievement levels are based on collective judgments about what students should know and be able to do relative to the body of content reflected in each subject-area assessment." That is not helpful at all. I can look at grade level standards to see what they are, and practice tests to see what the state expects that to look like, but it kind of just sounds like some board of people (Department of Ed? State Level? NCLB Commission?) got together and thought about what they wanted, and now every child is measured about that, and every state is panicking all the time about how the actual children aren't living up to it.
But maybe the kids are actually doing very badly? My neighborhood school has less than 50% proficiency, and they're above median for the state. Should I be worried? Did kids do better at some point in the past? When? Are there non BS sources of information about it?
I find it useful to look into the actual laws and regulations when media sources seem vague like this. From what I could find, the relevant law is 20 U.S. Code ยง 9621, which establishes the National Assessment Governing Board. You might have better luck finding the documents you want on the the NAGB website.
Here is a PDF which gives a broad outline of NAGB policy. Here is a longer PDF with more detail (the "procedures manual").
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Here's the website for the PSSA which is a set of standardized tests used in Pennsylvania
When I was in school I recall taking them once in elementary school and once in middle school (I think, not 100% sure)? It looks like they've been expanded to be grades 3-8 now. If you scroll down to the "Resource Materials" section there's "Scoring Sampler" document that has testing procedures, grading methodology, sample questions. The "Technical Reports" include sections for the criteria in developing the test questions (which references other publications that were used to decide on the content) and the statistical analysis that was performed. The "Results" section goes back ten years if you're looking for trends.
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