Recent Research and Useful Stats: NAEP 2005 Assessments: The Nation's Report Card

If you know any secondary school teachers or, like millions of Americans, you are heavily involved in high school graduation season right now, you know that the Class of `06 is not like the Class of `05 or the upcoming Class of '07. Assemblages of students tend to develop discernable class personalities as they march from kindergarten through grade 12, distinct and possibly very different than most of their individual personalities. Some classes handle the rigors and rituals of fund raising, homecoming, basketball season, prom and senior-itis better  than others. 



That may be the case too for academics and test taking, too, but trends across several classes suggest something undesirable happens regarding science and math education as kids proceed through the American education system. The Nation's Report Card 2005, released before Memorial Day weekend, reports twelfth grade student performance in the science portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) dropped between 1996 and 2005. Fourth grade performance during the same period rose.



Drawing on a sampling of 300,000 students, The Nations Report Card: Science 2005 provides national data of students average science scores from grades 4, 8, and 12, as well as from 44 participating states and the Department of Defense education activity schools. According to the report, national average science scores since 1996 have increased at grade 4, shown no significant change at grade 8, and declined at grade 12.

 

The 2005 results from The Nations Report Card for math and reading, released last October, showed similar trends: the fourth-grade math and reading scores have significantly increased since 2000, while since 2003, eighth-graders demonstrated modest improvement in math and a decline in reading. No twelfth-grade scores are available for math and reading.



The report also provides results for students grouped by various background characteristics (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity), in addition to different subjects, including mathematics, history, and civics. Frequently, minority students showed improvement on the 2005 science assessment. In grade 4, average scores increased by seven points for Black students and 11 points for Hispanic students since 2000. Those gains resulted in narrowing of the White-Black and White-Hispanic achievement gaps among fourth-graders since 2000. However, the 12th-grade White-Black gap widened during the same time period.

 

Useful Stats: State NAEP Rankings for 2005

SSTI has prepared a table ranking the 44 participating states and the Department of Defense schools by their NAEP score for 2005, which is reported on a 0300 scale. The data shows New Hampshire and Virginia tied for first with the highest 4th grade score of 161, while Mississippi placed last with a score of 133. The national average science score at grade 4 was 149.

 

SSTIs table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/060506t.htm

 

The Nations Report Card: Science 2005 is available at: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006466



The report card also is available with 4,000 additional TBED-related research reports, strategic plans and other papers through the Tech-based Economic Development (TBED) Resource Center, jointly developed by the Technology Administration and SSTI, at: http://www.tbedresourcecenter.org/.