National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation's Report Card Grade 12: Reading and Mathematics 2009 (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Education Sciences, November 2010).
Today marks the release of the 2009 NAEP results for 12th grade reading and math, which include—for the first time ever—state-level data for the eleven pilot states. There’s a ton of data in both the report and its online databank and you’ll want to analyze it at leisure, but highlights include modest, though statistically-significant, gains in both reading and math. Swell. Yet math and reading proficiency rates for high school seniors remain cringe-worthy: 26 and 38 percent, respectively. Further, reading scores have slipped since 1992. (The math assessment was revamped in 2005, nixing trend-line analyses.) As for the eleven states with 12th grade NAEP data of their own, we find few major surprises. Massachusetts, as expected, outscored the rest, though not by much. Florida, Arkansas, and West Virginia ranked low. As with previous report cards, you can analyze the dataset by loads of variables, like students’ home situations and post-high school plans. For example, across the eleven pilot states, urban schools faired generally better than their suburban or rural counterparts. So hunker down and start digging. You will almost surely agree that we’ve still got miles and miles to go before we sleep.