Science, math and reading scores are down : NPR

The new results of the national assessment of education (NAEP), also known as the Bulletin de la Nation, show that the scientific scores of eighth year students have dropped 4 points since 2019 and the reading scores of mathematics and 12th year have dropped 3 points during the same period.

The tests were administered between January and March 2024.

This is the first version of the NAEP score since the Trump administration began to cut the American education department. These cuts included the dismissal of more than half of the workers of the Institute of Education Sciences, IES, the arm of the department responsible for measuring the students’ results and supervising and processing the data that comes from the tests that students pass.

After these cuts, the ministry also canceled a dozen national and state assessments for students’ progress until 2032 – about half of these tests were planned for 12th year students.

NAEP, which provides data to the country’s bulletin, is mandated by the congress and is the largest representative test at the national level of student learning. NAEP tests were administered for the first time in 1969.

Today, mathematics and reading assessments are given every two years to a large sample of students in fourth and eighth year; The 12th year students receive them every four years. NAEP also administers voluntary assessments at other subjects outside the congress mandate.

What to do with test results

Reading scores have dropped for 12th year students, except among the most efficient students, compared to 2019, the last time this test was administered. Compared to the first reading assessment of the 12th year of NAEP, in 1992, the average score of today is 10 points below.

“The scores of our least performing students are at historical stockings – continuous decreases that started over ten years ago,” Matthew Soldner, acting director of IES, journalists told. “My predecessor warned against this trend, and his predecessor has also warned of this trend. And now I am warning of this trend.”

The 2024 assessment tested students for skills in reading reading and questioned them about the opportunities to learn and engage with the reading and outside of the school.

The twelfth year mathematical scores have dropped the same amount as the reading scores and were 3 points lower than that of 2005, the first time that this version of the mathematical test was administered.

“These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted and concentrated measures to accelerate students’ learning,” said Soldner.

Among the eighth year students, the average scientific score fell 4 points compared to 2019. Student scores have decreased in all areas, for low and very efficient students.

In addition to measuring the student’s academic success, NAEP also examines things such as students’ comfort levels with certain subjects and their presence. In these surveys, a smaller share of eighth year students indicated high levels of trust in their scientific skills compared to their counterparts in 2019.

And almost a third of 12th year students said they had missed three days or more schools during the month before the evaluation in 2024, an increase compared to 2019.

How changes in the education department have an impact on student assessments

Legally, the federal government has no power about what is taught in schools. Thus, while Tuesday’s release measured the results of the students under the President Biden, the experts avoid linking the NAEP scores to a particular administration.

“The federal government is in a unique position with these results of the tests to be the dashboard of American education, to tell us what is happening and for whom”, explains Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute Conservative. “”[That] This does not mean that he has the ability to solve these problems. It is a job for states. “”

But behind the scenes, federal changes to have had an impact on how the country’s bulletin is administered, according to a senior national center for Education Statistics (NCES), who administers NAEP.

The official, who informed journalists of the anonymity condition, confirmed that the cuts to the American education service had left only two senior executives assigned to NAEP and declared that the NCEs were based on additional support from colleagues from other departments to release the new release.

The NCES confirmed that, in order to respond to Congress test mandates in 2026 and 2028, the United States Secretary of the United States Linda McMahon approved a derogation to add at least eight staff positions before the end of the year.

Marty West is part of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and is vice-president of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), which establishes NAEP policy. He says that he is confident in the capacity of the department to meet NAEP deadlines in the future: “The preparation of tests that will be administered at the beginning of 2026, for example, really started five years ago and were far enough on the road in the spring of 2025.”

There will also be fewer deadlines to meet. This spring, the NAGB has reduced a dozen planned assessments – for the science of the fourth year, the history of the United States and the 12th year and the writing between the students of the fourth, eighth and 12th year – who were to be administered in the next seven years.

“It was not too unusual in terms of program history,” said West about the restructuring of the evaluation calendar. “We felt [it] was an important step so that we can allow our colleagues to concentrate their energies on tests which, in our view, were the most important. “Among them, mathematics and reading tests.

The NAGB is an independent and non -partisan organization made up of state and local representatives.

“There are no federal civil servants on the board of directors of the national evaluation, and it is by design,” explains West. “Although it is a federal evaluation … It is designed and administered in a way that meets the needs of state and local governments and the wider public.”