New NAEP Data Sound Early Warning for Postsecondary Pipeline

By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, Data and Strategic Initiatives

Reading time: Two minutes

Last year’s 4^th and 8^th grade students won’t be filling out college applications for some years, but their performance on last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), referred to as “the nation’s report card” are an early warning about academic achievement trends that need to be reversed, and quickly, to ensure all students are prepared for education after high school.

A summary of the new results is available here.

“I don’t know how many different ways you can say these results are bad, but they’re bad,” Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the American Institutes for Research and the University of Washington, told The Washington Post’s Laura Meckler.

The new data from the 2024 NAEP cover math and reading assessments for 4^th and 8^th graders. The assessments were administered early last year. The US Department of Education summarizes this year’s results:

“Compared to 2022:

• Average score increased in mathematics at grade 4; no significant change at grade 8.
• Average scores declined in reading at both grades.
• No significant change for most states in both subjects and grades.
• Lower percentages of students absent 5 or more days in both subjects and grades.”

Unfortunately, most grade-by-subject combinations have fallen relative to the pre-COVID-19 pandemic administration of the NAEP assessment, which represents an even more significant slide where decreases occurred relative to 2022.

Worryingly, score declines were concentrated for lower-performing students. Taking 4^th grade reading as an example, students scoring at the 50^th (median) percentile saw their scores drop five points relative to 2019. For the 25^th and 10^th percentile of test-takers, those declines were 12 and 10 points, respectively. Conversely, students at the 90^th and 75^th percentile of scores saw their declines drop just one and three points respectively.

There has been a tremendous amount of conversation coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic about “learning loss” at all levels, and unfortunately these data show that there has been loss, and it has been slow to be regained for too many students. There are many contributors to the dispiriting assessment results, but the NAEP does offer insight into a key contributor to students’ achievement: their time in the classroom. Among 4^th and 8^th graders who took the NAEP mathematics exam, about 30% were absent three or more days from school in the previous month; extrapolated across a 10 month academic year, that’s 30 or more days of school missed.

The Nation’s Report Card web site allows for all kinds of analyses at the state, grade, subject, and “large district” levels and are worth consideration. Not just because academic achievement matters for our 4^th and 8^th graders today, but also because these students will be those National College Attainment Network (NCAN) members are serving through Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion, college application assistance, and other supports tomorrow. The college-going pipeline has enough leaks and obstacles already; our students, communities, and nation cannot afford further backsliding in academic achievement to become another.

Read More:

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