2013 NAEP Results Aren’t Dramatically Different – and That’s Okay

In education the times they are a-changin’ – except when it comes to scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Today’s announcement of the 2013 results is hardly surprising: Students posted modest gains in 4th and 8th grade math and reading since 2011. Math scores in both grades inched up by one point, while 8th grade reading scores increased by—wait for it—two points. Hispanic and low-income students (those eligible for free lunch) saw similarly small increases in math and in 8th grade reading, as did black students in 8th grade reading. But racial and socio-economic gaps remain unchanged. Even more worrisome, in a time of growing economic inequality, the gap between poor students and their more advantaged peers in both grades and subjects hasn’t budged in a decade.

Today’s NAEP results may be same-old, same-old, but that’s not the case for most things in education these days. Over the last five years, education reform has had a significant effect on the daily work of state officials, district administrators, school leaders, and teachers. There are new academic standards, assessments, student data, accountability schemes, school improvement systems, and educator evaluations. New school and district models have also emerged. Charters and district takeovers aren’t the only innovations anymore, with the rise of virtual schools, flipped classrooms, competency-based education, portfolio school districts, and state-run achievement school districts. New models for training and developing teachers and school leaders have also taken root. At the federal level, the government doled out billions in stimulus dollars for education, introducing new competitive grant programs like Race to the Top, SIG, i3, and Promise Neighborhoods. And despite the appearance of gridlock in Washington (NCLB reauthorization, anyone?), NCLB frankly isn’t the law of the land anymore, now that 40+ states have waivers from its most significant provisions. If anything, K-12 education policy is a work in progress – it’s all about implementation.

That’s why I, for one, am comforted by today’s predictable NAEP results. Given the instability—and occasional incoherence—on the policy side of things, stability is a welcome change. Reform hasn’t made life easy for practitioners working in state education agencies, district offices, and classrooms. Implementation is often all-consuming work, and many worry it’s taking time away from what really matters: student learning.

Even with the policy churn, student achievement on NAEP continues its steady climb.

Even with the policy churn, student achievement on NAEP continues its steady climb. Yes, there are states like Tennessee and Washington, D.C. that showed far greater improvement from two years ago than the national average, and many will be quick to point to one reform or another as the reason for this growth. But I’m less interested in these impressive two-year leaps (which can’t reliably be linked to policy choices) than the slow and steady progress the nation has made as a whole, especially in math. Because modest and consistent gains can add up to dramatic improvement over time. 

In 1990, half of American 4th graders were essentially innumerate, scoring Below Basic on NAEP. Today, it’s 17 percent. The same was true for over 80 percent of black 4th graders in 1990, but now the figure is 34 percent. While these numbers are encouraging, they’re still too high for many, myself included. All students should be scoring at least at the Basic level in math and reading, and the majority of students should be Proficient. And no one would be disappointed with faster rates of progress, particularly in reading and in closing achievement gaps. Our ambitions, and the ambitions embedded in state and federal policy, simply don’t align with the slow and steady reality. But without question, students today—of all ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds—are doing better than they were twenty years ago. That progress is hard-won and worth celebrating.

Many policymakers, especially in D.C., seem ready to give up on the ambitious approach, picking away at education programs and investments until they’re either hollow or disfigured.

I won’t speculate as to which policy choices caused these changes (that would be misnaepery), but I am confident that policy mattered. Yet with increasingly anti-reform rhetoric from the right and left, many policymakers, especially in D.C., seem ready to give up on the ambitious approach, picking away at education programs and investments until they’re either hollow or disfigured. But modest improvements aren’t a bad outcome. Without an ambitious policy agenda and an unrelenting effort to implement it, however, I worry that next time the NAEP results will be dramatically different – for the worse. So let’s hear it for slow and steady, and keep up the good work."