I remember reading an article years ago titled “Change or Die.” The author’s big idea was to show how difficult it is to change your behaviors for the better. One story shared in the article was how patients, after having open heart surgery, returned to their same bad habits – smoking, drinking, eating unhealthy foods – that they practiced before they experienced serious heart problems. 90% of heart patients studied went back to their bad behaviors within 90 days of surgery.
Test scores aren’t a matter of life or death, like heart surgery, or are they?
Our Nation’s Report Card, or the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been sending its own version of a “Change or Die” message for over 30 years. Reading and math scores have flat-lined for the most part – for all age groups.
Last week, The 74 released yet another interpretation of longitudinal NAEP data that sends a sobering message.
“When the latest national achievement scores come out, people want to look at the change since the last time. Are things going up or down?”
“But that short-term focus on the averages loses sight of what’s happening at the tails – the top performers and the weakest – and how things have evolved over longer periods of time.”
Regarding 12th grade math scores, NAEP averages rose by three points from 2005 to 2009. And scores rose across the performance distribution, meaning top achieving kids improved along with low achieving testers. But from 2009 to 2013, 12th grade math scores leveled out, with low achieving kids improving a bit while top achieving students showed no improvement.
“By 2015, the [performance] curve began shifting to the left – in the wrong direction. This should have been the first warning sign on declining student achievement.”
“Between 2015 and 2019, the slide continued. In those years, the decline was mostly about the middle of the performance distribution shrinking. Meanwhile, the extreme tails of the performance distribution were starting to grow.”
By 2019, both top achievers and low achievers were declining in their performance.
“And then the pandemic hit, schools closed, and the performance distribution as a whole shifted even further to the left.” That shift to the left signaled further performance decline.
Reading scores, which go back to 1992 for graduating seniors, are even more depressing.
The nation saw some improvement from 1994 to 1998, but then 12th grade reading scores started to fall by 2002. And they have continued to fall up until today.
Although this data focuses on 12th grade, it’s likely other grades and subjects would show similar patterns over the past 30 years.
“While the data presented here are at the national level, any state, district or school leader could see how things are changing in their community.”
Changing for the worst.
It used to be that people were accustomed to the lower performers scoring poorly on tests.
But now top performers have started to decline, along with the rest of the overall students tested.
What does that say about our overall system? And when will we start to pay attention to the data – not just one-year data, but 30-year data?
Change or Die.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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