The states that are swimming against the NAEP tides

The bad news from the latest Nation’s Report Card has us analysts wearing out our thesauruses. Gloomy, dismal, a bloodbath…no negative seems overwrought for what we saw the other week, especially for our lowest-performing students. For example, since 2013, the start of our “Achievement Recession,” eighth grade reading scores for students at the 10th percentile have dropped by ten points. Ten points! That’s the equivalent of an entire grade level. The bottom seems to be falling out.

The good news, such as it is, is that a handful of states managed to make gains on the National Assessment, or at least stand still, even as their peers went backwards. Let’s take a closer look at what they accomplished, with a particular focus on the lowest-performing students.

How do you spell progress? D-C and M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I

Since 2013, the only two jurisdictions that made any statistically significant progress for their lowest performing students in either reading or math were D.C. and Mississippi. And even then, it was only for fourth graders. (In both cases, eighth graders were flat in reading and down in math.) Still, considering how bad the news was for almost everyone else, these contrarian trends are well worth celebrating.

What may explain D.C. and Mississippi? As I wrote on NAEP Day:

Washington, D.C., deserves much of the attention today, given its ability to demonstrate sustained and significant progress over time, and its decade-plus commitment to fundamental reform. Yet even D.C. comes with a demographic asterisk, given the rapidly changing population of the nation’s capital. It’s also true that, in many ways, the Great Recession skipped D.C.; let me encourage analysts in coming days to figure out how much credit should go to the schools and how much belongs to economic and social conditions.

There’s no need to caveat the other star of this year’s release, Mississippi. For a decade now, the long-suffering Magnolia State has been on an upward trajectory, especially in reading. That appears to be no coincidence. It has one of the very best early-literacy initiatives in the country, and has been quietly and methodically implementing the Common Core standards without much commotion.

Demography is not destiny

So only in D.C. and Mississippi have low achievers made gains as of late. But given the difficult national landscape, several other states deserve credit for maintaining their scores in the face of adversity. That’s because, as I have been arguing, there’s good reason to believe that the devastating impacts of the Great Recession—on school spending and families—are partly to blame for the big declines. (More on other possibilities below.)

Now let’s look for states that got hammered by the Great Recession—as measured by changes in their unemployment rates from 2007 to 2010—yet still managed to keep achievement steady. We’ll focus here on fourth grade scores through 2019, the most recent of which reflect students who were “born into” the recession.

Gladly we can find a handful of states worthy of recognition—for keeping their scores from declining even though they faced above-average increases in unemployment, perhaps indicating that their policies or practices have been working. Namely:

• Nevada, California, Michigan, Rhode Island, Idaho, Illinois, South Carolina, and Tennessee in both reading and math
• Arizona, North Carolina, and Oregon in reading
• Florida, Alabama, and Georgia in math

Figure 1: Statistically significant changes in fourth grade scale scores at the 10th percentile, 2013–19, sorted by change in unemployment rate, 2007–10
Note: Cells in green indicate statistically significant positive changes; cells in yellow indicate statistically significant negative changes; and blank cells indicate no statistically significant changes.

States that stretched the school dollar

Next let’s look at those states whose schools suffered through significant spending reductions but didn’t allow achievement to go backwards for their lowest performers. We’ll consider the magnitude of spending cuts back in the lean years of 2010 through 2013, and the performance at the eighth grade level—students who are old enough to have attended school during those trying times.

There’s not a ton of good news, but schools in several states experienced cuts that were harsher than the national average and still managed to keep their test scores steady, perhaps because of effective policies, practices, or reforms. Namely:

• Wisconsin in both reading and math
• Arizona, West Virginia, D.C., Oklahoma, and Mississippi in reading
• Georgia, Florida, Utah, Kansas, and Michigan in math

Figure Two: Statistically significant changes in eighth grade scale scores at the 10th Percentile, 2013–19, sorted by change in per-pupil spending, 2010–13
Note: Cells in green indicate statistically significant positive changes; cells in yellow indicate statistically significant negative changes; and blank cells indicate no statistically significant changes.

If you’re keeping count, here’s who deserves to be in the winner’s circle along with D.C. and Mississippi: Nevada, which arguably suffered the worst effects of the Great Recession, yet managed to hold steady in fourth grade reading and math achievement; Arizona, whose schools lived through some of the most dramatic spending cuts of the early 2010s, and a terrible economy to boot, and yet avoided declines in fourth and eighth grade reading; and Idaho, which also got hammered by high unemployment and big spending cuts, but stayed flat in three of four categories.

There will be blood

Finally, let’s finish with a double headscratcher: North Dakota and Alaska. With their vast oil reserves and other natural resources, they escaped the Great Recession relatively unscathed. Unemployment in Alaska grew less than 2 percent in the aftermath of the recession, in North Dakota less than 1 percent. Both states also increased per-pupil spending during the leanest years. Yet in both cases, achievement of their lowest-performing students is down across the board, in grades four and eight, in reading and in math.

The New England states of New Hampshire and Vermont also got through the recession OK, yet they saw declines almost across the board, too.

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So something appears to be driving down the achievement of the lowest-performing students virtually everywhere, even in places whose economies weathered the storm of the Great Recession quite well. What is it? A reduction in accountability pressure? A shift in focus away from low-performers? Common Core? (Though how to explain the declines in non-Common Core states?) Screen time, phones, and social media? The opioid epidemic? Let the quest for answers continue.

A Special thanks to research intern Pedro Enamorado for contributing to this post.