Comment by icegreentea2
21 days ago
You can go to the "nations report card" and play around with the NAEP score stats: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/mathematics/scores-per...
For me, two things pop out in particular.
Firstly, in math, if you look at how the percentiles break down, it seems clear that while there an overall drop in performance from 2020-2023, it also seems clear to that the top end of doing relatively ok. For example, at the 75th percentile, the we are basically flat from 2008 to 2020 (before dropping in 2023) - 2008: 305, 2012: 309, 2020: 307, 2023: 301 (net -4). This contrasts with the median which went from 2008: 283, 2012: 287, 2020: 282, 2023: 274 (net -9).
This implies to me that whatever flaws are in the overall system (at least pre COVID), the top end was relatively durable.
Secondly, if you go the "student group scores" section and click through all of the different sub-groupings, the only group that looks to have an overall flat score at all is "Private: Catholic".
I think the combination of the upper end being pretty durable, as well as the higher scores in the only "self selecting" category in the dataset may support what a lot of people tend to grumble about - the distribution of domestic situations is not favorable.
The thing that popped out to me playing around with that is that when you look at most of these things from the late '70s through now, many show some modest growth or flatness through the '90s, then grew a little more up through the 2010s or so, and have pulled back a little in the last few years to roughly 2008ish levels. This is for both math and reading and for both 9 year olds and 13 year olds.
Depending on what exactly you are looking at the places that it grew or was flat or declines change, but overall the big picture look gives me more "keep an eye on it" vibes than "we've got a crisis" vibes that some people seem to think are justified.
If we were spending the same effort and resources to stay flat, I'd agree with you.
I think the "crisis" is that we've been spending more and more resources just to stay "flat".