WASHINGTON — Math skills among fourth- and eighth-graders are showing steady improvement and fourth-graders' reading scores are also rising, according to a federal report released Tuesday. But white students are still scoring far higher than African American and Hispanic students on a standardized assessment of academic proficiency, and that achievement gap is most prominent in California.
Nationwide, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which bills itself as "the nation's report card," showed substantial gains in math and more modest gains in reading. Available at nationsreportcard.gov, the report accompanying the test results put math scores at their highest level since 1992, when the test was first given. But the discrepancy in scores between white and black eighth-graders and white and Hispanic fourth- and eighth-graders has changed little over time, the report found.
"Closing the achievement gap more quickly is the major challenge of the next three to five years, particularly in the large states with fast-growing minority student populations," said David W. Gordon, Sacramento County's superintendent of schools and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the assessments' administration.
The math and reading assessments are given every two years to a representative sample of fourth- and eighth-grade public school students in each state. As in 2005, California was among the lowest in the nation, scoring nine or 10 points below the national average in both subjects at both grade levels. Massachusetts, as in 2005, was first in all categories; Vermont and the Department of Defense school system were tied with Massachusetts for eighth-grade reading scores.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said that ranking states against each other was inherently unfair because each had different accountability measures. Even so, he said, "it is also clear that California schools have much work to do to raise the achievement level of all groups of students."
The results "reflect the trends we see on our state standards-based tests, and also the challenges faced in educating California's diverse population. . . . These results point to our stark and persistent racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps in our schools that must be addressed if our students and our state are to thrive in the demanding global economy," he said.
