New analysis of math, reading scores 'very disconcerting'

Decades of bleak results from kids' standardized tests now seem almost routine, but a new study made public Tuesday scratches beneath the surface to pin down just how many students in major U.S. metropolitan areas can actually read or do math proficiently. The results: Startlingly few.

If all of Detroit’s fourth-graders took the well-respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, just 120 African-American fourth-graders across the entire city, by researchers’ estimates, would score “proficient” or above in math.

“This is not a misprint,” the authors warn.

Researchers at the Center for American Progress, the left-leaning Washington, D.C., think tank, gathered demographic data about the current crop of students in 21 metropolitan areas and combined it with recent results on the federally administered test of math and reading skills.

Other results:

• In Atlanta, just 60 Hispanic fourth-graders and 40 Hispanic eighth-graders would score proficient or above in reading. 
• In Cleveland, only about 30 Hispanic eighth-graders and 80 African-American eighth-graders would be considered proficient in math.
• In Baltimore, an estimated 60 Hispanic fourth-grade students would score proficient in reading.

The figures are estimates based on the demographic data, not actual determinations of individual student scores.

“The problem is stark and very disconcerting,” said Ulrich Boser, a CAP senior fellow and lead author of the report.

The idea to reframe the percentages, Boser said, is an attempt to change how people think about achievement. “I just really feel like our brain is not built to easily understand proportions and fractions. We are much more inclined to think of absolute numbers.”

He added, “We’ve seen these numbers thrown around a lot and well-analyzed, but we hadn’t seen them put in this context.”

Mike Petrilli, of the right-leaning D.C. think tank the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said, “The minuscule proportion of poor and minority children in some major American cities who are scoring at ‘proficient’ is surely a tragedy, but it shouldn't be surprising, given the deep, long-term poverty most of their children face.”

Most of the results come from a subset of NAEP known as the Trial Urban District Assessment, or TUDA, administered in 21 cities and metro areas — not just Cleveland, Detroit and Atlanta, but in places like Duval, Hillsborough and Miami-Dade counties in Florida.

Michael Casserly of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents 67 urban districts, said its members created TUDA in 2000 "so we could tell where we were doing well, where we were showing improvements, and where we need improvement."

The researchers suggest that cities and states that have committed to higher academic standards such as the heavily debated Common Core have seen “clear gains” in student proficiency. In Massachusetts, for instance, the percentage of fourth-graders scoring proficient or above in math rose from 41% in 2003 to 54% a decade later. The sheer number of new fourth-graders doing math proficiently or better? About 7,000, the researchers suggest.

In Florida, a similar jump meant about 22,000 more fourth-graders scored proficiently or higher in math; and in Washington, D.C., about 1,000 more fourth-graders scored proficiently or higher in both math and reading.

D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said the improvements appeared “because we have raised our standards, aligned our curriculum to those standards, worked to engage our students and families, and have the strongest workforce in the country working to improve the outcomes of all of our students.”

Petrilli, a proponent of charter schools, said implementing higher standards is worth supporting. “But that's not going to be enough for the disadvantaged urban children (the researchers) write about. For them, incredible schools are necessary to give them a shot at transcending their current circumstances, and I'm doubtful that traditional school districts can deliver that.”

The report is available at: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2016/01/26/129547/a-look-at-the-education-crisis/

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