NAEP: math scores improve, reading does not

September 26, 2007
Math Scores Rise, but Reading Is Mixed

By SAM DILLON
America’s public school students are doing significantly better in math since the federal No Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002, but gains in reading achievement have been marginal, with performance declining among eighth graders, according to results of nationwide reading and math tests released Tuesday.

The results also showed that the nation had made only incremental progress in narrowing historic gaps in achievement between white and minority students, a fundamental goal of the federal law.

The reading and math tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress and administered by the Department of Education, were last given in 2005, and this year’s results landed in the midst of a fierce political debate over whether to renew the law. They offer ammunition both to the business leaders and other groups who support the law, as well as to teachers unions and groups who say its emphasis on standardized tests hurts schools.

President Bush called the results “outstanding,” adding, “These scores confirm that No Child Left Behind is working.” But critics of the federal law, including an antitesting group and a national teachers union, said many scores were rising faster before the law’s enactment.

The national tests were given to 700,000 fourth- and eighth-grade students in all 50 states this year.

“Overall, we’re doing well, but it’s clear that results are better in math than in reading,” Darvin Winick, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, the bipartisan group set up by Congress to oversee the tests, said in an interview. “Probably the educational establishment needs to look at middle school reading to see why we’re not making progress there.”

The federal law requires states to administer reading and math tests every year in grades three through eight, with the goal of bringing every student to “proficiency” in math and reading by 2014. But the law lets each state write its own tests and define proficiency. The national reading and math assessment is considered a more reliable indicator of performance than the state tests.

The good news came in math. The average math score for fourth graders is at its highest level in 17 years, and the percentage of fourth graders scoring at or above proficiency rose to 39 percent this year, up eight points since the federal law took effect. The latest results also show that eighth-grade students’ math performance has improved, although not as quickly as among younger students.

The reading results were sobering. On average, reading scores for fourth graders have increased modestly since the law took effect, but in about a dozen states the percentage of students who read at the proficiency level has stayed the same or fallen.

Eighth-grade scores have declined slightly, on average, since the law took effect, and in 18 states, including Connecticut, the percentage of students performing at the proficient level in reading has fallen. The biggest declines came in West Virginia, Rhode Island and New Mexico.

“Substantial improvement in reading achievement is still eluding us as a nation,” Amanda P. Avallone, an eighth-grade English teacher from Colorado who sits on the assessment’s governing board, said Tuesday.

The results showed minimal progress in narrowing achievement gaps between white and minority students. On this year’s reading test, for instance, fourth-grade black students scored 27 points below whites on the assessment’s 500-point scale, a slight improvement over 2003, when blacks scored 31 points lower than whites.

Federal officials said each point on the test equates to about a tenth of a school year’s worth of learning. In eighth-grade math, the gaps between white and black and between white and Hispanic students were as intractably wide as in 1990.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who as chairman of the Senate education committee helped the Bush administration pass the law in 2001, called the results “encouraging.”

The American Federation of Teachers congratulated its members for the improvements in math and in fourth-grade reading, but noted that “many scores were rising faster before No Child Left Behind was enacted.” Fair Test, an antitesting group, made a similar comment.

The results showed striking achievement differences among the states since the law was passed. Massachusetts, for instance, has made spectacular progress in math and good progress in reading in fourth and eighth grade. In New Jersey the percentage of fourth and eighth graders showing proficiency in math has risen significantly.

But achievement has stagnated elsewhere. The percentage of eighth-grade students proficient in math in New York declined to 30 percent this year from 32 percent in 2003, for instance.

The state education commissioner, Richard Mills, focused instead on results showing that New York has been more successful than the nation as a whole in raising the achievement of black and Hispanic students.


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