Student Scores Stalled in ‘90s in 2 Key Areas

Despite years of intensive efforts to improve the performance of American students, scores in reading and science stagnated in the 1990s and the achievement gap between blacks and whites widened, according to the latest measure of long-term trends in the nation’s classrooms.

Over the 30 years of the federal assessment, the only substantial gains among students overall were in mathematics.

The sobering results, released Thursday by the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, offer further evidence that solutions to educational problems are elusive.

In a presidential election year when both major parties have embraced public schools as a top priority, the results provided fodder for representatives from across the political and social spectrum.

Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley sounded a rare note of optimism. At a Washington news conference, he said he viewed the results as encouraging, given how much more diverse the nation’s student population is than it was 30 years ago, when the long-term assessments began.

“In several categories, blacks and Hispanics are scoring better than ever, and that’s good news,” he said. “White kids are doing better too. That, of course, impacts the [achievement] gap.

“We have a persistent gap,” he said, “and we must look to close it, while lifting achievement for all.”

Among Latino students, average scores are somewhat higher than those for blacks. The achievement gap between whites and Latinos has narrowed over the 30 years, in some cases dramatically, but in the last decade that gap has fluctuated.

The tests are part of the congressionally mandated National Assessment of Educational Progress. The data come from tests in reading, mathematics and science given to 9-, 13- and 17-year-old students since the early 1970s. Unlike other National Assessment of Educational Progress results for individual subjects, the long-term trend data are not broken out by state.

Among the key findings of the 30-year trend survey were these:

* In reading, where there has been considerable upheaval in curriculum, achievement has shown little change. Performance by young readers improved during the 1970s, declined in the ‘80s and turned up only slightly in the 1990s.

* In math, student performance in the 1990s continued to improve, though generally at a slower pace than in the 1980s, when strong gains followed declines during the previous decade.

* In science, student achievement stalled in the early 1990s after substantial gains in the 1980s.

* After big reductions in the achievement gap between whites and African Americans in the 1970s and 1980s, the difference widened somewhat again in the most recent decade, though the gap is still far smaller than when the survey began.

* The average scores of black students have remained well below those of whites. For black 17-year-olds, the average scores in reading and math are about the same as those of 13-year-old white pupils. In science, 13-year-old white students actually scored higher than 17-year-old black students. The worst achievement divide was in science, a situation with troublesome implications for blacks, given the new high-tech economy.

Scores of Asian students were not broken out for comparison.

Education watchers had forceful opinions about the results and the steps that should be taken to address the weaknesses they reveal.

Chester E. Finn Jr., a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, cited the lack of solid achievement gains in most categories and lashed out at Democrats who “want 35-year-old federal programs [such as Title I and Head Start] to go on unchanged when what they need is a fundamental overhaul.”

He said he has high hopes that the current push for standards, testing and accountability and the growth of charter schools and school vouchers will result in long-term improvements.

Gary Orfield, a Harvard University professor who has long criticized segregation in schools, said the nation has erred by emphasizing the teaching and testing of basic skills and failing to invest in teaching higher-order thinking skills for all students.

He urged a return to the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, when the federal government poured funds into schools and began large-scale educational experiments such as school desegregation and bilingual education.

The Education Trust, a Washington organization that has assailed both Democrats and Republicans for failing low-income and minority students, called the data disappointing “but hardly surprising.”

“Their teachers are less qualified and their course work is less rigorous,” said Kati Haycock, the trust’s director. “Put these factors together and, of course, you get lower test scores.”

Even the education level of parents, which strongly influences academic performance, could not bridge the racial divide. Black and Latino students with college-educated parents scored higher, but still lagged well behind whites with college-educated parents.

“This may raise questions about the quality of the college education that students of different races receive,” said Michael T. Nettles, vice chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the assessment program.

“African American parents in particular” must insist that their children have access to high-quality schools, curriculum and teachers, said Nettles, a scholar on black education at the University of Michigan.

Los Angeles school board President Genethia Hayes said large urban districts could help narrow the achievement divide between minorities and whites by ensuring that children who are in most need of good instruction get access to creative, experienced teachers. Los Angeles Unified School District, she acknowledged, is “doing a lousy job” on that score.

The nation as a whole, she said, is putting too much responsibility on schools to solve society’s ills.

“One of the problems is that we have eroded so many of the safety nets for families,” she said. “If we continue to take social policy out of the mix and throw it all on public schools, we are not going to be able to turn it around.”

Riley suggested that the nation embrace “proven ways” to improve achievement, including better teacher training, especially for math and science instructors; higher academic standards; more reading by families together at home; and more federal investments in reduced class size, early childhood education and after-school and summer school programs.

The long-term trend survey also detailed performance by sex. Females continued to outperform males in reading in all three age groups. In mathematics, males had outperformed females at age 17 in previous long-term trend assessments, but in 1999 this gap disappeared, with males and females performing at similar levels in all three age groups.

In science, males scored better than females at ages 13 and 17, but not at age 9.

Among other findings were that students said they are doing math homework more often than were students 20 years ago. Also, teenagers reported that they and their parents are spending far less time reading for pleasure than in the mid-1980s.

“Reading is a skill that is important to develop in people’s everyday lives,” said Lawrence Feinberg, assistant director of the National Assessment Governing Board. “It’s harder to show gains in reading when children and their parents are reading less on their own at home.”

Over the last 30 years, the program has administered 10 long-term trend surveys for reading, 10 for science and nine for mathematics. In 1999, about 16,000 students took each of the three long-term assessments.

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Times staff writer Nick Anderson in Washington contributed to this report.

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Test Score Gap

Black and Latino students have consistently lagged behind white students in national tests over the last 30 years. Seventeen-year-old blacks and Latinos have narrowed the test score gap with whites, although blacks lost ground in the 1990s. The picture for Latinos in that decade is mixed.

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Source: U.S. Department of Educations National Center for Education Statistics, NAEP 1999 Trends in Academic Progress

Note: Other racial and ethnic groups were not included in the study because of insufficient sample size.