A new analysis of U.S. performance on the international PISA exam in mathematics shows significant declines for students at the top and middle of the achievement distribution from 2003 to 2006.* This is the strongest evidence to date that the performance of America's highest-achieving students dropped during the early years of No Child Left Behind's implementation. It's impossible to know whether the federal law caused this trend, but it's plausible that the pressure NCLB placed on schools to raise the scores of their lowest performing students encouraged them to give less attention to students in the middle and at the top.
Though the analysis shows gains for the nation's lowest-performing students, they are tiny compared to the large decreases at the top and middle. The achievement gap is closing?but certainly not in the way policymakers intended.
What's your take on these data? Please let me know by posting a comment below.
* This chart was prepared by staff at the National Center for Education Statistics at my request. A few weeks ago I saw a presentation about Australian performance on PISA by Barry McGraw, former head of the education division of the OECD. He showed a chart similar to this one for Australia, and I wondered if similar data existed for the U.S. They did, but they were buried in technical reports until now. Many thanks to the NCES staff for making this critical information more accessible.
?Mike Petrilli
