The dominant narrative about American schools is one of decline: Math and reading achievement at historic lows, the nation caught in a long-term “learning recession.”
But that’s a narrative based on standardized test scores. Assessing the effectiveness of American schools on those measures paints a misleading picture of a system that has made some notable progress over time, argues a new paper by two Stanford University researchers.
In fact, when looking more broadly, a different picture emerges: More students are progressing through higher education and career programs and completing more years of total schooling than in decades past, and a case can be made that kids’ educational experiences have improved—especially for those ages 16-25, said Michael Kirst, one of the study’s authors.
“Overall, I think American education, in terms of years of schooling attained, has been increasing, and when we limit our assessment to these tests that kids take at 15 and 17 years old, we’re limiting our view,” he said, referring to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—which is also given to younger students—and the PISA exams given internationally. “Very few people are ending their education at 15 and 17 now, and it’s important to understand more holistically what that looks like.”
Put another way, most of the widely discussed tests measure performance in K-12, but most people’s education extends well beyond high school and into the workforce, said Kirst, a professor emeritus of education and business administration at Stanford.
Kirst acknowledged, however, that students’ test scores in math and reading have indeed slipped and that school districts face significant struggles, including persistent attendance and behavior problems.
The takeaway from this work, he said, is “not that the U.S. education system is not broken, but that it is not completely understood.”
In the new report, Kirst and co-author Victor Chan examined 11 measures of educational attainment ranging from participation in Advanced Placement courses to four-year degree attainment to the education of incarcerated people.
For most categories, the researchers analyzed historic enrollment data, changes in completion rates, and long-term outcomes in the form of employment and earnings. But in many of the categories, the researchers struggled to assess progress due to outdated or irregular data collection, or a “near-total absence” of national tracking, Kirst said.
There was limited information, for example, about attainment of professional certifications and job credentials (now a major emphasis with the surging popularity of and deployment of new policies emphasizing workforce training), military-connected education, and on-the-job training.
“The neglect here in not understanding or prioritizing them has led to this very poor status of these statistics, and we need a major effort now,” Kirst said.
Still, the report included several clear bright spots, he said.
Among them:
- Access to AP courses that allow students to earn college credits has been on the rise while passage rates have held steady or improved. In 1984, roughly 6,000 schools administered exams to fewer than 200,000 students, according to the report. In 2024, 23,000 schools administered those exams to more than 3 million students. The percentage of exams passed remained steady at around 66% each year, the report says.
- Dual enrollment that allows students to graduate from high school with college credits and sometimes even degrees has similarly expanded, translating into greater access to post-secondary education (although dual enrollment access has been uneven).
- Registered apprenticeship programs have expanded to more professions. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of active apprenticeships grew by 73%, the report says.
- Four-year college completion has also edged up over the past 15 years, even as many students who start college don’t earn degrees.
- And a greater percentage of workers today have earned professional certificates and credentials than two decades ago.
“These positive trends are not isolated. Rather they are systemic,” the report concludes. “They reveal that American education, far from failing outright, has quietly adapted to serve millions of learners through flexible, applied, and workforce-linked pathways.”
In the report, Kirst and Chan urge lawmakers, advocates, and schools to focus on three strategies to ensure students are prepared for “economic resilience, civic participation, and lifelong learning.”
First, expand promising programs, such as AP, dual enrollment, and apprenticeships by incorporating them into broader state and federal education strategies and devoting more funding to them.
Second, invest in more robust research and data collection systems “that track participation, progression, and outcomes across all postsecondary pathways,” not just for college transfers from two-year programs to four-year degrees.
Finally, eliminate “the rigid divide between high school and college” by creating an educational model that “combines academic instruction with workplace learning” for 16- to 20-year-olds.
“If we spent as much money trying to understand things like credentials as we did on the analysis and reanalysis of NAEP,” Kirst said, “I think we would be paying more attention to the things that could really work in moving our young people forward.”
