Low math and English scores mark the nation’s report card, California and L.A. included
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- Nationally, math and English scores were flat or fell.
- LAUSD did better in fourth-grade math, a bright spot.
- Students are reading less for pleasure.
Instead of hoped-for improvements from pandemic-era campus closures, math and English test scores of fourth- and eighth-graders largely held steady or declined nationwide — results that were about the same in Los Angeles and California.
Not only are few students scoring as advanced or proficient, but fewer are achieving a “basic” ranking, the next level down, according to the overall results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly called the nation’s report card.
The percentage of eighth-graders reading below “NAEP Basic” level was the largest in the assessment’s history, and the percentage of fourth-graders who scored below NAEP Basic was the largest in 20 years.
Experts characterized the scores as a sobering call to action. Although the Los Angeles Unified School District fared better in some metrics, the results dampened the district’s recent characterization of its academic progress as unprecedented and historic.
Across the nation, “student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics. “Where there are signs of recovery, they are mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performing students. Lower-performing students are struggling, especially in reading.”
The tests scores provide a periodic snapshot of student achievement by testing a sampling of students from across the country. Though the tests don’t correlate directly with California’s learning standards, the NAEP scores provide a rare opportunity to compare student progress across school districts and states as well as across the nation.
The latest scores reflected a worsening achievement gap.
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In eighth grade, higher performers regained ground lost and their lower-performing peers continued to decline or show no notable progress.
In eighth-grade mathematics, this widening gap is most pronounced. Lower-performing students declined, while higher-performing students improved. As a result of this divergence, the average score in 2024 was not significantly different than in 2022.
In reading, lower-performing students struggled the most, with scores lower than the first NAEP reading assessment in 1992.
The COVID-19 pandemic era of remote learning in 2020 and 2021, when many campuses were closed, can’t be blamed for all of the problems.
“We are deeply concerned about our low-performing students,” Carr said. “For a decade, these students have been on the decline. They need our urgent attention and our best effort.”
Carr also pointed to what she considered a disturbing trend from a linked survey of students: Fewer are reading for pleasure. She also said that chronic absenteeism was linked to lower scores.
But Carr was determined to include a note of optimism: “Progress was possible before, and it is possible again.”
Researcher Dan Goldhaber pointed to an ongoing disconnect between test results and grades.
“I think the general public believes student achievement is back to normal when all the tests — and NAEP is probably the most reliable — are showing we are nowhere near to pre-pandemic levels of student achievement,” said Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, which is part of the American Institutes for Research.
“And, of course, I don’t care about the tests themselves,” he added, “but rather what they forecast for the future college and labor market outcomes of students.”
LAUSD scores
In Los Angeles — as in the nation — fourth-grade math offered a bright spot, with scores up significantly from 2022. In this metric, L.A. Unified improved more than the state and the nation. But L.A.’s overall score remained lower.
The percentage of L.A. students who scored as proficient in fourth-grade math increased from 20% to 27%. For California, the increase was from 30% to 35%; in the nation, from 35% to 39%.
L.A. Unified’s eighth-grade math scores were slightly higher, but not statistically significant.
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In fourth-grade reading, 25% of L.A. students were proficient, unchanged from 2022. Nationally, 30% were proficient, down 2 percentage points from 2022. California also dropped 2 percentage points, to 29%.
Eighth-grade reading took a tumble in L.A., from a proficiency rate of 28% to 22%. That national number was unchanged at 29%; California was at 28%, down 2 points.
The collapse of eighth-grade reading scores was a puzzler for L.A. Unified Supt. Alberto Carvalho, who, two years ago, celebrated a large rise in that grade level. Those students would now be in high school. He noted that sampling methods can lead to anomalies despite the best efforts of the National Center for Education Statistics, on whose governing board he served as a longtime member.
There had been discussion in 2022, he noted, over whether the testing sample included more students at higher-performing schools.
Carvalho reached back to 2019 — before the pandemic — for a silver lining. Among a group of the nation’s largest school systems, L.A. Unified was one of four that seemed to have caught up to pre-pandemic scores, he said.
“We’re not going to celebrate that, because my expectation is at some point we should be seeing increases across the board,” Carvalho said.
On the state tests — which cannot be used for nationwide comparisons — L.A. Unified showed strong gains and reached a record graduation rate, although overall academic performance still fell well short of state learning goals.
Because these improvements were across all grade levels, Carvalho had characterized them as historic and unprecedented, while also acknowledging that more improvement needed to follow.
Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University, expressed concerns about the L.A. Unified scores on the national test.
“The goal cannot be to simply catch up to pre-pandemic levels given unacceptably low overall achievement rates and achievement gaps by race and income,” Lake said.
State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond, however, said that L.A. Unified fared well on the national test when compared with trends at other large school systems.
She also found hopeful indicators in California’s overall performance. In a state with higher poverty and growing homelessness, “state scores are up a little and holding steady in NAEP,” Darling-Hammond said. “We’re making small strides against a lot of odds.”
She credited higher state education funding and strategic investments in such areas as mental health, teacher training and schools with expanded community services.
A less rosy assessment of California’s progress came from Natalie Wheatfall-Lum, director of TK-12 Policy for EdTrust-West, an education advocacy group.
“California should be ashamed,” she said. “The pace of progress for Californian students of color is not just slow, it’s stopped altogether. ... These NAEP scores reflect unacceptable stagnation in both math and reading scores and entrenched gaps between both Black and Latinx students and their white and Asian peers and between students from low-income households and their wealthier peers.”
She added: “Anyone looking at these results should be asking what California has been doing for 25 years.”
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