NAEP scores on the rise; achievement gap persists

Education experts say that latest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate that American students are making substantial progress improving reading and math proficiency.

The 2007 NAEP, also called “The Nation’s Report Card,” showed that fourth- and eighth-graders scored at all-time highs in math and reading.

“We’ve been making progress on NAEP for the past 15 years,” said Holly Jacobson, CSBA’s assistant executive director for Policy Analysis and Continuing Education. “There’s no doubt that schools are improving and we’re working hard.”

Jacobson noted that scores have not improved dramatically in the years since implementation of No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration’s sweeping national school reform program. In fact, eighth-grade reading scores have been flat.

Scores for black and Hispanic students still lag behind those of whites and Asians, although students from every subgroup have consistently improved every year since the test was first administered in 1990—with students of color making some of the biggest gains.  However, the persistence of  the achievement gap is especially troubling for a state like California, where nearly half of all students are Hispanic.

“All students are improving at a consistent rate,” said Jo Ann Yee, CSBA senior director for diversity and urban affairs. “Black and Hispanic students need to improve at a much faster rate in order to catch up.”

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said the NAEP results demonstrate once again that the achievement gap between different racial groups is very difficult to bridge.

California's NAEP scores, said O’Connell, “reflect the trends we see on our state standards-based tests, and also the challenges faced in educating California's diverse population. Once again, these results point out stark and persistent racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps in our schools that must be addressed if our students and our state are to thrive in the demanding global economy."

"Even so,” he added, “California's Hispanic students showed a significant, 5 percentage-point increase since 2005 in the proportion of students performing at basic or above in fourth grade reading, and Hispanic students who were not classified as English learners increased overall by nearly five points,” he said.

Federal education officials administer NAEP math and reading tests every two years to a representative group of fourth- and eighth-graders in each state. California’s scores rank near the bottom of the list, partly, experts say, because of the state’s testing policies and exacting accountability system.

For example, California tests a greater proportion of its special education and English learners students than many other states. O’Connell said that 33 percent of California fourth-graders were identified as English learners. Just 2 percent of these students were exempted from testing. By contrast, Texas excluded 31 percent of its English learners from testing.

"I'm proud that California policy-makers believe it is important to test all students regardless of their challenges, and that we have stuck to high standards and expectations for all students,” he said. “The result is that our state doesn't fare as well as we'd like on some national comparisons, but our students are better served if we hold high standards and gather more complete data."

The NAEP test doesn’t measure California students’ progress toward mastering state standards and NAEP scores don’t say much about how California is doing relative to other states.

“NAEP can give us good trend data,” said Jacobson. “But it is not a useful tool for national comparisons of state progress, and NAEP scores don’t tell us whether our students are meeting state standards.”

Related link:
NAEP scores and reports are available @ www.nationsreportcard.gov