Scores for Indiana students did not change significantly from the last assessment in 2013, but nationwide scores did decline in some areas, according to an IU press release.
Peter Kloosterman, the Martha Lea and Bill Armstrong Chair for Teacher Education and a professor of mathematics education, said overall results continue to show little changes in the release.
He suggested steps taken for the 2001 No Child Left Behind Law have had little influence on scores.
“Certainly the lack of gain in the last 10 years suggests the accountability measures haven’t helped,” Kloosterman said in the release. “If there were gains from that, we would be seeing them now, and we’re not.”
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly called NAEP and referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, is a national assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas.
Math and reading tests are given in odd-numbered years to samples of students in all 50 states, according to the release.
Though experts warn against drawing conclusions from year-to-year changes in the scores, the results are closely watched for state comparisons and signs of learning gains and losses.
In the national results, 2015 scores for eighth-grade students were lower than 2013 scores in both math and reading. Scores for fourth graders were lower in math and unchanged in reading, according to the release.
Indiana eighth graders saw a one-point drop in math and a one-point gain in reading, while Indiana fourth graders saw a one-point drop in math and a two-point gain in reading.
None of those changes were considered statistically significant given the relatively small sample of Indiana test-takers.
Scores for Indiana students continued to be at or above national averages.
“And actually, given the income levels in Indiana, that’s pretty good,” Kloosterman said in the release.
In 2013, Indiana got attention for a significant jump in NAEP scores for its fourth-grade students.
Kloosterman said in the release that was almost certainly a result of a state policy that called for schools to retain students in the third grade if they didn’t pass a standardized reading test.
That meant the lowest-scoring students were held back and were not included in the fourth-grade testing sample.
In math, students across the U.S. have made significant progress since NAEP began in the early 1990s and improved by about two grade levels for fourth graders and nearly that much for eighth graders, according to Kloosterman’s analysis.
“But almost all of that gain was from 1990 to 2005,” Kloosterman said in the press release. “There’s been very little gain since then.”
Alyson Malinger
