Assessment

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

By Sean Cavanagh & Kathleen Kennedy Manzo — July 14, 2005 4 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

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.

Read the report, “NAEP 2004 Trends in Academic Progress: Three Decades of Student Performance in Reading and Mathematics,” from the National Center for Educational Statistics.

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 to the 3-year-old law.

The types of standards and accountability measures guiding the federal law have likely led to progress in student achievement, according to Darvin M. Winick, the chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP. But, as Mr. Winick pointed out, many states had already begun making such changes and focusing intensely on improving reading and math instruction after the 1999 national assessment and prior to the federal law’s implementation.

See Also

“There’s certainly been a greater emphasis on the elementary school years and getting kids started off on the right foot,” said Grover “Russ” Whitehurst, the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the arm of the U.S. Department of Education that administers the test. But that effort, he said, started with the states and was bolstered by the federal law.

The trend tests were first given in 1971 and are the nation’s best ongoing indicator of how student achievement in those subjects has changed over time. Trend tests in writing and science were discontinued in recent years because of technical problems with the reliability of the writing results and changes in the sciences that make the test of that overarching subject outdated. The trends tests are separate from the main NAEP, given periodically in a number of core subjects since 1990 to national and state samples of students. Results of the 2005 main NAEP in math and reading are due in the fall.

While the trend tests are given to nationally representative samples of public and private school students, too few private schools and students volunteered to take the tests to ensure the reliability of their results.

High School Students Still Lag

Since the early 1970s, younger students have tended to make relatively large gains on the trend math test, while scores among teenagers remained mostly stagnant. This time, however, the improvement among the youngest age group, 9-year-olds, was particularly dramatic, with average math scores jumping from 232 to 241 on a 500-point scale—the largest single gain since 1973, when the long-term NAEP was first administered in that subject.

“There’s no question, those are outstanding results,” declared Tom Loveless, the director of the Brown Center at the Washington-based think tank, the Brookings Institution. He has studied previous NAEP math scores in detail. “It’s been true for a while now. … We’ve been seeing the larger increases among younger students.”

Average math scores among 13-year-olds rose from 276 to 281—also the largest gain for that age group since the long-term NAEP’s inception. The performance among 17-year-olds, however, was less than stellar, with that age group turning in an average score of 307, 1 point lower than in 1999. The 2004 math score for that age group was barely higher than in 1973, when the average mark was 304.

In reading, 9-year-olds scored an average 219 on a 500-point scale, up from 212 in 2004 and 208 in 1971. The performance of older students has changed little in more than three decades. The average score for 13-year-olds, for example, was 259 in 2004, statistically the same since 1980 and just 4 points more than in 1971. The average score of 17-year-olds—285 points—was the same as in 1971, although their results had improved slightly from 1988 to 1992 before declining.

Mr. Winick noted that significant demographic changes in the student samples have taken place over the life of the tests. The proportion of Hispanic students taking the tests, for example, has tripled since 1971, but the effect of those changes on the results has not been fully studied.

Administration of the next long-term trend tests in math and reading is scheduled for 2008.

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Recruitment & Retention Webinar
Substitute Teacher Staffing Simplified: 5 Strategies for Success
Struggling to find quality substitute teachers? Join our webinar to learn key strategies to keep your classrooms covered and students learning.
Content provided by Kelly Education
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Artificial Intelligence Webinar
AI in Education: Empowering Educators to Tap into the Promise and Steer Clear of Peril
Explore the transformative potential of AI in education and learn how to harness its power to improve student outcomes.
Content provided by Panorama Education
English Learners Webinar Family and Community Engagement: Best Practices for English Learners
Strengthening the bond between schools and families is key to the success of English learners. Learn how to enhance family engagement and support student achievement.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Assessment Why the Pioneers of High School Exit Exams Are Rolling Them Back
Massachusetts is doing away with a decades-old graduation requirement. What will take its place?
7 min read
Close up of student holding a pencil and filling in answer sheet on a bubble test.
iStock/Getty
Assessment Massachusetts Voters Poised to Ditch High School Exit Exam
The support for nixing the testing requirement could foreshadow public opinion on state standardized testing in general.
3 min read
Tight cropped photograph of a bubble sheet test with  a pencil.
E+
Assessment This School Didn't Like Traditional Grades. So It Created Its Own System
Principals at this middle school said the transition to the new system took patience and time.
6 min read
Close-up of a teacher's hands grading papers in the classroom.
E+/Getty
Assessment Opinion 'Academic Rigor Is in Decline.' A College Professor Reflects on AP Scores
The College Board’s new tack on AP scoring means fewer students are prepared for college.
4 min read
The United States Capitol building as a bookcase filled with red, white, and blue policy books in a Washington DC landscape.
Luca D'Urbino for Education Week