The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on ane topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to go stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.

NAEP test scores
Source: NCES

The National Cess of Education Progress, run past the U.Southward. Department of Teaching, is the only test that is administered in schools across every land in the nation. Fourth and eighth graders across the country have shown meaningful progress on it since the early 1990s, especially in math. The 2013 results in these younger grades even showed small-scale improvements from 2011. (Source: NAEP Mathematics and Reading 2013).

Just the 2013 testing results for twelfth graders, released May 7, 2014, are woefully stagnant. The scores for high schoolhouse seniors oasis't improved at all since 1992, when reading tests were first administered. Indeed, today'south reading scores are really lower than they were in 1992. The math results, which appointment back to just 2005, testify a pocket-sized increment right after that offset year. But it'south been consummate stagnation since.

It'south hard to make sense of this data. How exercise you lot explain why in that location are improvements in fourth and eighth grade, only not twelfth?

Ane explanation could be demographic changes. Today in that location are many more minorities in twelfth course. The Hispanic population, which has typically scored lower, has exploded. Hispanics accept tripled from vii% of loftier school seniors in 1992 to 20% in 2013. The white population, which has traditionally scored higher, has declined to 58% from 74% in the aforementioned time catamenia. More than students are diagnosed with a inability today (11% in 2013 vs. five% in 1992). More students are English language learners.

Furthermore, the high school graduation rate has jumped from 74 pct to 81 percentage. That means that the weakest students who used to drop out of loftier school and were previously not around in twelfth grade to be tested on the NAEP, are now taking the examination.

"Our twelfth grade population is our population. And we don't explain abroad test scores based on demographics. But it'southward useful to go on in mind that we are seeing increases in subgroups that have traditionally performed lower," said John Easton, acting commissioner of the National Middle for Didactics Statistics and managing director of the Plant of Pedagogy Sciences.

The pool of high school students being tested in 2013 is clearly a weaker pool than the 1 tested in 1992. That might be masking improvements that we otherwise would have seen had demographic changes not occurred.

But here's the affair. When you lot look at top achieving students in the top 75th and 90th percentiles. Their scores are FLAT. (Run into the NCES charts below). High achieving students aren't improving at all. So yous tin can't blame the infusion of more low performing students in the testing pool for the disappointing test scores. Fifty-fifty if we hadn't introduced a greater number of weaker students into the mix, the scores of our high schoolhouse students would still exist stagnant.

Indeed, when you lot drill downwardly by percentile, information technology'due south the weakest students who are showing pocket-size improvements. If not for their improvements, the national average would have declined!

NAEP test scores
Source: NCES
NAEP test scores

Related stories:

High school wasteland: Demographic changes do not explain test-score stagnation among U.Southward. high school seniors

Washington DC and Tennessee post huge gains in math and reading in 2013 while nation shows small improvement

The Hechinger Study provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on pedagogy that is free to all readers. Only that doesn't hateful it's free to produce. Our piece of work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help u.s.a. keep doing that.

Join the states today.

Jill Barshay writes the weekly "Proof Points" column nigh teaching enquiry and information, covering a range of topics from early on childhood to higher education. She taught algebra to ninth-graders for...