NAEP Scores Are In. What Does That Mean?

Depending on who you talk to, Texas’s score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, was either better than expected, flat, or horrible.

Often referred to as “the nation’s report card,” the NAEP assesses a sampling of fourth and eighth graders every two years. Roughly 7,500 students in Texas participated in the 2017 NAEP.

“NAEP scores offer something rare in education policy: data that are standardized across states and across time,” the Urban Institute explains.

And in Texas, results appear to reveal that the state was on par with the national results in math, but lagging far behind in reading achievement.

“Results for 2017 show that our African-American, Hispanic and white students perform in the top 10 of all states in mathematics, but reading results are lagging, as are overall averages,” Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath said in a statement this week.

But not everyone is forecasting doom.

The Urban Institute, which compiles and analyzes data from the NAEP, found that when adjusting for demographics, Texas actually did quite well.

“But comparing NAEP scores assumes that states serve the same students—and we know they don’t,” the think tank said. “A better way to compare and talk about NAEP performance is to use adjusted NAEP scores that account for demographic differences across students in each state.”

The institute found that when demographics are factored in, Texas students did quite well in math, and above-average in reading. In fact, the state was 14th in fourth-grade reading, 20th in eighth-grade reading, second in fourth-grade math and fifth in eighth-grade math.

Some of the biggest gains, experts say, have been in urban districts.  “We’re not where we want to be, but there has been some tremendous progress there,” National Center for Education Statistics associate commissioner for assessment Peggy Carr said in a symposium the day the results were announced. The NCES administers the NAEP, and carefully tracks urban districts as part of the 27 Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA). Fort Worth ISD and Dallas ISD are in that group, as are Austin and Houston.

That’s not to say that there isn’t work to be done.

“We know we need to accelerate the pace of reform and improvement in our urban schools, and we know our achievement gaps are still too wide,” said Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, “but these NAEP data give us the tools we need to ask hard questions about our instructional practices and where we need to improve.”

And while urban districts still have significant achievement gaps, they are closing them. NCES data reveals that on average, urban public school eighth graders have improved their math scores by five scale points, compared to the national average of two. Fourth-grade math scores for urban schools showed a two-point improvement compared to flat scores nationally.

National reading scores for fourth grade went up one point, but urban scores were up by five points, and eighth-grade scores rose four points nationally, but eight points in urban schools.

So how did Dallas ISD fair? Fourth and eighth-grade reading, and eighth-grade math held steady, and overall, Dallas’ fourth-grade math scores are still higher than other large cities, but showed a slight dip.

“I’m disappointed in the fourth-grade math scores, but one of the reasons we believe in NAEP is that we want to know how our students compare not only in Texas, but throughout the country,” said Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa in a statement. “Although the state assessment data shows promising trends with positive gains, over the last three years, we also need to show that kind of progress nationally.”

The district says that when compared to the other TUDA districts, and when you factor in demographics like Urban Institute did, the district’s students are actually doing much better.

“For example, when comparing fourth-grade African-American and Hispanic math students who are eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to other districts, Dallas’ numbers rank in the top end,” the district said. “Of significant note, fourth- and eighth-grade English language learners in Dallas ISD performed higher than their peers in the nation’s public schools and large cities.”

Bethany Erickson is the education, consumer affairs, and public policy columnist for CandysDirt.com. Contact her at [email protected].