Nation’s Report Card Shows Declines In Math And Reading

“…the fourth- graders who took the test in 2013 are not the same fourth-graders who took the last NAEP years earlier”.

■ Nationally, 36% of fourth graders were at or above the proficient level in reading, about the same as 2013. But fourth grade math scores fell five points since 2013, reversing a trend in which New York City fourth-graders were doing better than their peers in other big cities.

Nationally, math scores slipped for fourth- and eighth-graders over the last two years, and reading grades were not much better, flat for fourth-graders and lower for eighth-graders. However, Mississippi was the only state to show significant improvement since 2013 in both reading and math scores among fourth graders.

“One downturn does not a trend make”.

North Carolina schools have been able to cut the proportion of students unable to perform at a basic level on the fourth-grade tests since 2000. Their reading proficiency has remained flat over that same timeframe.

Results from national math and reading tests show slipping or stagnant scores for the nation’s schoolkids, but on a brighter note, Massachusetts students had the highest average scores in nearly all categories.

In the Detroit public school district, 96 percent of eighth graders are not proficient in mathematics and 93 percent are not proficient in reading. That’s down one point from 2013.

NAEP officials say it is too soon to draw any conclusions about the results.

For both fourth- and eighth-graders in math, the state has not made significant progress since 2000 in narrowing achievement gaps between minority students and white students. Thirty-nine percent of the nation’s grade-4 public school students demonstrated achievement at or above the proficient level in mathematics, with seven percent achieving advanced scores.

The Florida Department of Education initially downplayed the bad news on the math scores, but a member of the state board that oversees the department publicly called them a “disaster”.

“Four years ago we committed to becoming the fastest improving state in the nation in academic growth”, Gov. Bill Haslam said in a press release announcing the NAEP results. The test is issued through the National Center for Education Statistics, under the U.S. Department of Education.

The results come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.

The data is broken down further to show progress in large urban school districts, such as Los Angeles, New York and Boston, but doesn’t include breakdowns of performance at the district level in Maine. Just 13 percent of students tested as proficient in math in 1990; now 40 percent do.

“We have that gap in Wyoming but something we may also be interested in that particular area is we are performing slightly lower than the national average”, said Young. In math, 38 percent of Virginia’s eight-graders reached or exceeded proficient, beating the national average by six points. That’s on par with national averages.