Despite a pending policy change aimed at including more students with disabilities and English-language learners (ELLs) in the "nation's report card," the federal agency that administers the national testing program appears to be softening the penalty for states that fail to improve inclusion rates. The disagreement underscores the uneasy relationship between the National Center for Education Statistics, the federal agency that administers the national tests, and the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), the independent body that sets policy for the exams. And it reflects an intensifying debate about how to ensure that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a congressionally mandated set of tests designed to take the national pulse on student achievement, accurately allows for state-by-state comparisons of student achievement. These issues, as all issues with students with disabilities and ELLs, are hot potatoes. Two years ago, NAGB adopted a policy that takes effect in January, during the next administration of NAEP, to limit how many students with disabilities and English-learners states can be cut from the testing pool. The policy says, essentially, that only students with severe cognitive disabilities and ELLs who have been in the country for less than one year should be excluded from taking the exams in reading, mathematics, and other subjects. Nationwide, some 830,000 4th and 8th graders from nearly 18,000 schools will take the tests in reading and math next year. The impetus for the NAEP policy was to push states to smooth out those state exclusion rates, to have the same proportion of students being tested across states. As written, that policy would help make NAEP scores more comparable from state to state. As it now stands, states that exclude more students with disabilities and ELLs have a record of posting better scores than states that are more inclusive.