California makes gains in reading on national assessment

Led by strong scores in 8th-grade reading, California moved closer to the national averages in reading and math, continuing a decade-plus trend of generally slow but steady improvement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The closely watched assessment released its 2017 results for 4th and 8th grades this month.

California was one of seven states with a 4-point increase in 8th-grade reading, enabling it to come within 3 points of the national average on a 500-point scale. In 2007, it was 10 points below the average of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. The results show it moved to nearly 5 points in 8th-grade math and about 5 points in 4th-grade reading, having halved the distance from average in the past decade in both tests.

The nation’s 1-point gain in 8th-grade read-

ing was the only increase, though small, in the 2017 assessments. California progressed slightly in 4thgrade reading and in 8thgrade math since 2013, while the national average has stood still or dropped slightly.

In 4th-grade math, there has there been no progress in California or the nation. Since 2005, the average nationally and in California has stagnated. California continues to lag the national average.

Administered every two years since 1969 by the National Center for Education Statistics, NAEP offers an independent and reliable measure of student performance over time. It’s administered to a random sample of students with each student assigned only a small number of the questions because the goal is to get a snapshot of student progress based on where they live and their racial and socio-economic backgrounds. In California, 6,100 students each in 4th and 8th grades from 280 schools took the test. NAEP, often called the Nation’s Report Card, enables crossstate comparisons because the questions are not tied to any state or group of states’ academic standards. Experts create the questions based on what they believe students should know at various grade levels.

Scores for 27 large, urban districts, including Fresno, Los Angeles and San Diego, are reported separately. This year, San Diego’s 6 point increase in 4th-grade reading was the most among those districts in 2017, and for the first time San Diego exceeded the national score — by a point. A decade ago, it was 12 points below the national average. A point or two variation each year is usually not statistically significant. Six points is considered unusually large.

In 8th-grade reading, Los Angeles continued seven straight years of increases. San Diego and Fresno were second and third among urban districts with the biggest gains in 4th-grade math.

The three California districts “did consistently better at a time when many urban districts that were tested showed declines,” said Linda Darling Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute, a research and policy organization in Palo Alto. “They were not carried along by a surge across the country. This is good news for California.”

Despite improvement, California had a long way to go to catch up and has performed in the bottom tier of states for decades. That’s still the case. For example, only Washington, D.C., and four states — New Mexico, Alabama, Louisiana and North Dakota — scored below California in 4th-grade math. Alabama and Nevada had the same score as California. In 8thgrade math, nine states fared worse than California while Alaska, Hawaii and Rhode Island had the same score. California’s strong performance ranking on 8th grade reading in 2017 raised its state ranking from 44th to 37th.

Demographics is one factor for California’s lower scores. The state has more students who historically have scored low. California has the most English learners of any state in the nation, by far: 27 percent of 4th-graders, compared with 12 percent for the nation as a whole. California also has proportionally more low-income students and its ethnic and racial makeup is different with more Hispanic students and fewer white students.

But demographic differences are only part of the story. On tests in both math and reading in both grades, nearly every student group in California performed worse than their counterparts nationwide.

In 4th-grade math in 2017, 51 percent of white

Demographics is one factor for California’s lower scores. The state has more students who historically have scored low. California has the most English learners of any state in the nation, by far

students, 26 percent of Hispanics and 19 percent of black students nationwide scored proficient, the level that indicates a solid mastery of the work. In California, each of those groups scored between 4 and 7 percentage points lower than their counterparts in other states.

Nationwide, 14 percent of English learners scored proficient and 47 percent scored below basic — a dismal proportion but better than in California, where 9 percent were proficient and 53 percent were below basic.

Only in 8th-grade reading did two student groups in California score higher than their peers nationwide: whites and well-off students — those not qualifying for the lunch program.

The latest NAEP results confirm the persistent achievement gaps among student ethnic and racial groups that other performance indicators, like the Smarter Balanced state assessment given in California, have revealed. But, with a few exceptions, the disparities have narrowed nationwide and in California during the past 25 years.