New NAEP Scores Bring Bad News, and a Worrying Trend …
… but not the one many pundits are pointing to
by Martin Davis
Let me get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way. Standardized tests have value, but the way we use them too often runs against the grain of that usefulness. When parents and, unfortunately, school leaders, point to one number or a few numbers and scream failure, they are missing the point (and often misrepresenting the data). Tests like NAEP should raise questions, not be used as a bludgeon to chastise teachers and schools.
With that out of the way, let’s turn to the most-recent NAEP news.
What’s Being Reported?
First, it’s important to understand what’s being reported. On Wednesday, the National Assessment Governing Board released the NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment Results (LTTA): Reading and Mathematics. The NAGB describes LTTA results this way:
Since the 1970s, the NAEP long-term trend assessments have been administered to monitor the academic performance of students across three age levels (9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students). This report mainly focuses on the comparison of age 13 students (typically in grade 8) between 2020 and 2023. A report card summarizing results for 9- and 13-year-old students across all administrations back to the 1970s is forthcoming.
So this report is looking at the change in performance for 13-year-old students between 2020 and 2023. That’s a bit early for such an assessment - they’re usually given in four-year intervals - but NAGB wanted to measure something very specific. Namely:
… NCES [National Center for Education Statistics] decided to administer the long-term trend assessments to provide data on post-pandemic student performance.
All together, some 8,700 students in 460 schools took part in the testing that occurred between October and December of the 2022-2023 school year. Of these schools, 82% had taken part in the LTTA assessment given in 2020.
The Big News
To no one’s surprise, the report reveals deep drops in reading and math for 13-year-olds following two years of COVID. Speaking to the Washington Post, Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and member of the governing board, said:
These latest results provide additional evidence of the scale, the pervasiveness and the persistence of the learning loss American students experienced as a result of the pandemic.
How bad was that loss? I’ll let the NAEP report say it:
The 2023 average scores in reading declined compared to 2020 for many student groups reported by NAEP; for example, scores were lower for both male and female 13-year-olds, for students eligible and not eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), and for students attending schools in the Northeast and the Midwest regions. In mathematics, scores declined compared to 2020 for most student groups; for example, scores were lower for Black, Hispanic, and White 13-year-olds, for students attending schools in all regions of the country, for students eligible and not eligible for the NSLP, and for students at all reported levels of parental education.
In short - nearly any subgroup of students you care to name.
This chart, showing the trend in NAEP long-term trend reading scores at five selected percentiles for 13-year-old students puts a fine point on the matter.
The very best, as well as those who struggle the most, and everyone in between showed declines in math.
A similar pattern, though not as steep, emerged in reading.
So yes - these scores are worrying.
But the overarching question remains unanswered: What’s causing the decline?
COVID Plus …
Without doubt, COVID took a toll on student achievement, and it shows in these scores. What specifically about COVID, however, was responsible?
Wednesday’s LTTA data, however, also included three survey questions that have been administered with each LTTA assessment for decades.
The questions were as follows:
Those taking the long-term trend reading assessment were asked how often they read for fun on their own time
Those taking the long-term trend mathematics assessment were asked which type of mathematics course they were currently taking
All students were asked about the number of days they had been absent from school in the previous month.
Let’s start with absences. The following chart details the number of absences students reported over the previous month [emphasis added]. As you can see, the numbers for those missing either 3-4 days, or 5 or more days rose significantly from 2020.
This sharp rise should not be surprising.
In my semester of teaching last year, I saw first-hand how students’ staying at home had radically altered their habits regarding being at a certain place at a certain time. (It happened to adults, too - hence, the work-from-home boom that employers are now struggling to contain.)
The consequences are clear. Students who don’t attend school simply can’t keep up and learn.
On the math classes students are taking, there was no real change overall from 2020 to 2023, but the percentage of 13-year-olds taking algebra are way down from 2012.
But the most disturbing thing the survey surfaced was related to reading. The chart below sums up the issue succinctly. Among 2022-23 test-takers, a full 31% reported reading for leisure either never or hardly ever. That’s a full 9 points higher than in 2012.
Those who read for leisure every day? Just 14% of students.
What Are We Doing?
These types of data are always hard to explain. There’s never one factor that causes these kinds of declines. But allow me to venture one factor that is playing at least a small roll in these drops in reading scores.
Over the past year and a half, I have covered and written about book bans, book burnings, and fear-mongering over pornography in school libraries.
In Spotsylvania County, I’ve listened as parents railed against literature and CRT (a concept they fundamentally misunderstand, based on the comments made, and then - with a straight face - scream: “We want academics taught.”
It’s the same in many school boards across the nation, as parents denigrate learning anything that is remotely controversial.
Is it possible that the move to ban books and denigrate reading are moving parents to:
embrace this conservative push?
work actively to prevent other parents’ students from reading
refuse to accept that the object of education is not to secure a job, but to train your mind to be nimble and able to continually learn throughout your life, so that you can succeed professionally and personally?
These parents’ actions, without their even possibly realizing it, are undermining academic achievement by pushing kids away from the very thing that enables their learning - reading.
Ask any history teacher or English teacher worth their salt, and they’ll probably give you some version of the same story: Learning is a life-long pursuit. I’m not just packing students’ heads full of facts, I’m teaching them to pursue learning and questions and truth for the rest of their lives.
Literature, the arts (Michelangelo’s “David,” anyone?), a full telling of history - the very thing that Moms for Liberty fears most - these are academics of the highest order. Basic reading, writing, and arithmetic are not. Rather, they are the most basic foundation stones that make academics and education possible.
The more-challenging academics are usually earned not through sitting in a classroom, but through one’s willingness to read independently.
Today’s parents and their supporters on school boards in Spotsylvania and across the nation who are pushing students away from reading should be asking themselves the role their relentless attack on books is having on the number of book titles on library shelves.
We are quickly becoming - if we aren’t already - an illiterate culture.
The problem is not the kids. The problem is the adults in the room who refuse to pass on adult skills to students as they enter middle and high school. The ability to learn independently through reading. The ability to understand other people respectfully. The ability to let material that may be personally offensive wash over you, but not drown you, because the student stands on the bedrock of a well-trained mind.
We should be worried about these trends in academic performance the LTTA is providing.
We should be more worried about the adults who are fueling the decline by undermining the most important tools of education - books themselves.
Good article, Marty. Please spell out some of your abbreviations at first use. TTFN