9-year-olds Make Gains on Long-Term NAEP

Today the National Center on Education Statistics released results from the 2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)-Long Term Trend, a federally administered assessment, also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” designed to provide an independent picture of what America’s students know and can do.

The report’s findings are a mixed bag. First, the good news: 9-year-olds enrolled in our nation’s schools have made significant progress in reading and math, both since the assessment was first administered in the early 1970s and since the last administration in 2004. This is good news since we know that whether or not students can read and do math on grade level by the end of third grade is a strong predictor for later academic achievement and educational attainment. These gains in 9-year-olds’ skills likely reflect both education reform efforts focused in the elementary grades and increased access to pre-k and other early education programs. Thirteen-year-olds also seem to have made gains in reading and math, both since the early 1970s and since 2004. Gains for 13-year-olds were not as strong as those for 9-year-olds, however. In another piece of good news, math and reading achievement gaps for African American and Hispanic students, relative to white students, have narrowed since the 1970s, and African American and Hispanic students have continued to narrow the gap in reading since 2004.

But there’s bad news as well: High school aged students haven’t made the same gains as their younger peers. 17-year-olds have made statistically significant gains in reading achievement since 2004, but their reading performance is no better today than it was in 1971. And there are no significant differences in the math achievement of 17-year-olds in 1978, 2004, and 2008.

Some observers have argued that the lack of gains for 17-year-olds should dampen our enthusiasm for gains made by younger students, because it shows that those gains aren’t lasting. That’s a faulty argument, however, because today’s 17-year-olds are a different cohort than today’s 9-year-olds. Students who were 17 in 2008 were 9-year-olds in 1999. And the recent gains in 9-year-olds’ reading and math skills didn’t begin until after 1999. In fact, the 1999 NAEP long-term trend assessment came at the end of two decades of declining and stagnant 9-year-old reading achievement, and ten years of stagnant math performance for 9-year-olds. Its no wonder that students in that elementary school cohort haven’t posted dramatic increases in high school achievement relative to the cohorts that preceded them.

The real test is whether the today’s 9-year-olds will sustain their pre-k and elementary school learning gains into middle and high school. It’s too early to say with any confidence that they will (our middle and high schools do need to improve their performance) but it’s also much to early to assume they won’t. Educators and policymakers must work to continue to build on the improvements we have made in the preK-3rd years, by expanding access to quality pre-k, full-day kindergarten, and implementing aligned, high-quality curriculum and instructional programs across the preK-3rd continuum, while also ensuring that we improve our middle and high schools to sustain the gains students make in the early elementary years.