High-Performing Students? Meh...

So says the Gates-funded, ultra-reformy National Council on Teacher Quality:

New Jersey’s report card from a group that seeks to improve standards for the nation’s teachers is dismal: D-plus, 36th in the U.S. and making less progress than most states.

The report, scheduled to be published today by the National Council on Teacher Quality, could bolster parts of Gov. Chris Christie’s education overhaul agenda — though his critics say it shouldn’t.

The analysis considers how teachers are trained, evaluated, rewarded and fired.

But it does not assess the overall state of teaching and learning. That’s an area where, on average, New Jersey is among the highest-performing states — despite being home to low-performing schools, particularly in its most impoverished cities like Camden.

Some of the areas Christie wants to fix are the same ones the Washington-based research and policy group says are broken.

“What the governor has proposed with evaluation and tenure would put New Jersey among the trailblazer states,” said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the teacher quality organization.

New Jersey’s grade barely budged from the “D” it received from the council two years ago.

Florida, a state where standardized test scores are far short of New Jersey’s, received the highest mark this year — and it got just a “B.” [emphasis mine]

Wait a minute: New Jersey has HIGHER student scores than Florida, but gets a worse grade from NCTQ? Are we sure Florida isn't doing a better job at teaching kids?

Yep:

New Jersey beats Florida in every NAEP assessment listed on the state comparison tool. And New Jersey beats the national average in all of its assessments; Florida beats the national average in only five.

How is this possible? Because - as both Susan Ohanian and I have repeatedly pointed out - these think tanky rankings have nothing to do with student achievement. They are based solely on whether the state in question is doing whatever the think tank making the rankings wants the state to do. But here's the problem...

Florida is doing a good job following NCTQ's prescriptions, and New Jersey is doing a poor job. But New Jersey's students do better than Flroida's. Logic suggests only two possibilities:

1) NCTQ's policies have no effect on student achievement.
2) NCTQ's policies have a negative effect on student achievement.

It's got to be one or the other, folks. But in either case, if you want a state's kids to do well on the NAEP, ignore NCTQ.

ADDING: Trolls, please don't bring up the ridiculous argument that if the NAEP is good for comparing states, standardized tests must be good for identifying good teachers. Just because screwdrivers are great for driving screws doesn't mean they're also good at beating eggs.

ADDING MORE: Even the wingers funded by the Koch brothers can't deny that New Jersey's kids kick some serious academic ass:

New Jersey moved from 10th place to third in student performance based on the 2011 scores for low-income students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, given to fourth- and eighth-graders. Massachusetts and Vermont were the top two states based on student performance, and both also scored poorly on teacher quality.

Maybe "teacher quality" means something different when you're living in a think-tanky, hermetically sealed bubble. And dig this:

New Jersey gets an A for home school regulations, because the state has none. Parents who choose to teach their children at home are not required to follow any state guidelines or curriculum.

Oy. These people get to spew this stuff all over the press; me, I can't get a simple reply from Tom Moran...