Rick Hess and Jenn Hatfield wrote on NRO last week about how recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores are a “train wreck.” Their point that fourth- and eighth-grade scores had been regularly improving until now is well taken, as is their point that the Obama administration is suddenly distancing itself from the same test that it once trumpeted as proof that its policies were working.
But I have a less alarmed reaction overall. The score declines since 2013 in eighth-grade math and reading were only 0.07 and 0.06 standard deviations, respectively. (Translated, the median student in 2015 scored at roughly the 47th percentile of the 2013 class.) Average eighth-grade scores are now about the same as they were in 2009. That is, to be sure, a major rebuke to the Obama administration’s inflated claims of its own success, but schools were certainly not dismal in 2009, nor are they today.
The more important story, in my opinion, is what is happening with the NAEP scores of high-school students. Pushing up the scores of younger students matters little if the gains cannot be sustained through graduation. As I noted last week, 17-year-olds made some gains in math in the 1980s, but their scores have been stagnant for the past 25 years. In reading, the scores of 17-year-olds have been mostly flat since the inception of the long-term NAEP in 1971. It seems strange to focus so intently on minor year-to-year changes in the middle grades when past gains there have appeared to dissipate in high school.
The high school flat-lining is a challenge not just to the Obama administration, but to the federal education establishment as a whole. The Education Department’s mission is “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” It is incumbent upon supporters to prove the department is indeed accomplishing that mission, despite the high school NAEP evidence that suggests otherwise.
We’re waiting.