9-Year-Olds Record Highest Scores Ever on Long-Term NAEP

By Sean Cavanagh and Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

Washington

The nation’s 9-year-olds have made considerable gains in reading and mathematics over the past five years, turning in the highest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress long-term trend tests in those subjects since they were first given more than three decades ago.

Minority students and those scoring in the lowest percentile on the tests given during the 2003-04 school year showed the most dramatic progress among 9-year-olds, narrowing the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white peers, and the highest and lowest performers, to the smallest margins ever. Average scores among 13-year-olds also showed improvement in math, but not in reading, while the performance of 17-years-olds on both tests was flat since the tests were last given in 1999.

But while U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings hailed the results as “proof that No Child Left Behind is working; it is helping to raise the achievement of young students of every race and from every type of family background,” other federal officials and experts cautioned that there is no evidence that the progress is linked...