The NAEP, also known as the nation’s report card, is given to a sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students every two years.
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“NAEP is widely viewed as the most credible assessment of knowledge and skills, so to the degree those scores are going down, a few may say the Common Core and higher standards in general are necessary and for that matter that more rigorous state tests like NAEP are also necessary”.
The results were interpreted differently across the education spectrum.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the news “isn’t great”, but he and other officials warned against viewing this year’s results as an indicator of a possible long-term trend. “I would caution everyone to be careful about drawing conclusions”.
“Having the higher academic standards caused the states and teachers and districts to change the way they’re teaching certain things”, Minnich said in an interview.
“The big promises made when Congress passed No Child Left Behind and when this administration introduced Race to the Top have gone unfulfilled”, said AFT president Randi Weingarten. No states managed to raise scores across the board.
-36 percent of fourth graders were at or above the proficient level in reading, about the same as 2013. “We need to … exercise a little bit of judgment, and wait and see what will happen in 2017”.
New York City results were for the most part on par with other big cities, though lower in fourth-grade math. The national average is 221. Reading scores have been harder to budge, with a net increase of six points in fourth grade and five points in eighth since the first assessment in 1992.
Among the nation’s largest districts, Miami-Dade was singled out for posting higher scores on fourth grade math and eighth grade reading exams.
In 2013, Indiana got attention for a significant jump in NAEP scores for its fourth-grade students. Ohio scores have shown no gain in more than a decade.
California landed toward the bottom.
The percentages of Arkansas pupils scoring at proficient or advanced levels were 25 percent in eighth-grade math, 27 percent in fourth-grade math, and 32 percent in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade reading. Preliminary results show that about two-thirds of students will meet or exceed the state’s proficiency benchmark.
In mathematics, fourth-grade scores decreased significantly compared to 2013 scores. Assuming no significant demographic changes in the nation between 2013 and 2015 and business as usual in the nation’s schools, the expected score for 2015 would have been 287 (rounded).
NAEP is administered by the Education Department’s research arm, the National Center for Education Studies. “This isn’t a pattern that we saw coming”, Carr said, calling the scores an “unexpected downturn”.
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Duncan echoed Carr’s sentiments. “The uptick in JCPS scores indicates that the school system is making substantial progress in implementing new college and career-ready standards and important headway in boosting student achievement”.
