El National Center for Education Statistics de los Estads Unidos ha dado a conocer el más reciente informe de resultados educacionales en lectura y matemática para dicho país a través de su Informe National Assessment of Educational Progress.
El colega Jeff Puryear ha llamado nuestra atención sobre este informe y acompañado el comentario de la AP sobre este Informe, el cual se transcribe más abajo.
Los resultados muestra incrementos leves en el rendimiento de los alumnos en matemática; no así en lectura. El procentaje de los alumnos que alcanzan el nivel “básico” es alyo; sólo un tercio se ubica en el nivel intermedio, llamado proficient (compoetente).
The average reading score for eighth-graders was up 1 point since 2005 and 3 points since 1992; however, the trend of increasing scores was not consistent over all assessment years. In comparison to both 1992 and 2005, the percentage of students performing at or above the Basic level increased, but there was no significant change in the percentage of students at or above the Proficient level.
The average reading score for eighth-graders was up 1 point since 2005 and 3 points since 1992; however, the trend of increasing scores was not consistent over all assessment years. In comparison to both 1992 and 2005, the percentage of students performing at or above the Basic level increased, but there was no significant change in the percentage of students at or above the Proficient level.
Rercursos asociados
La interpretación del gobierno, Ministra de Educación, 25 septiembre 2007
Otra mirada a los resultados (Comentario del diario The York Times, 26 septiembre 2007)
Math Scores Rise, but Reading Is Mixed
By SAM DILLON
Published: September 26, 2007
America’s public school students are doing significantly better in math since the federal No Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002, but gains in reading achievement have been marginal, with performance declining among eighth graders, according to results of nationwide reading and math tests released Tuesday.
The reading and math tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress and administered by the Department of Education, were last given in 2005, and this year’s results landed in the midst of a fierce political debate over whether to renew the law. They offer ammunition both to the business leaders and other groups who support the law, as well as to teachers unions and groups who say its emphasis on standardized tests hurts schools.
President Bush called the results “outstanding,” adding, “These scores confirm that No Child Left Behind is working.” But critics of the federal law, including an antitesting group and a national teachers union, said many scores were rising faster before the law’s enactment.
The national tests were given to 700,000 fourth- and eighth-grade students in all 50 states this year.
“Overall, we’re doing well, but it’s clear that results are better in math than in reading,” Darvin Winick, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, the bipartisan group set up by Congress to oversee the tests, said in an interview. “Probably the educational establishment needs to look at middle school reading to see why we’re not making progress there.”
The federal law requires states to administer reading and math tests every year in grades three through eight, with the goal of bringing every student to “proficiency” in math and reading by 2014. But the law lets each state write its own tests and define proficiency. The national reading and math assessment is considered a more reliable indicator of performance than the state tests.
The good news came in math. The average math score for fourth graders is at its highest level in 17 years, and the percentage of fourth graders scoring at or above proficiency rose to 39 percent this year, up eight points since the federal law took effect. The latest results also show that eighth-grade students’ math performance has improved, although not as quickly as among younger students.
The reading results were sobering. On average, reading scores for fourth graders have increased modestly since the law took effect, but in about a dozen states the percentage of students who read at the proficiency level has stayed the same or fallen.
Eighth-grade scores have declined slightly, on average, since the law took effect, and in 18 states, including Connecticut, the percentage of students performing at the proficient level in reading has fallen. The biggest declines came in West Virginia, Rhode Island and New Mexico.
“Substantial improvement in reading achievement is still eluding us as a nation,” Amanda P. Avallone, an eighth-grade English teacher from Colorado who sits on the assessment’s governing board, said Tuesday.
The results showed minimal progress in narrowing achievement gaps between white and minority students. On this year’s reading test, for instance, fourth-grade black students scored 27 points below whites on the assessment’s 500-point scale, a slight improvement over 2003, when blacks scored 31 points lower than whites.
Federal officials said each point on the test equates to about a tenth of a school year’s worth of learning. In eighth-grade math, the gaps between white and black and between white and Hispanic students were as intractably wide as in 1990.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who as chairman of the Senate education committee helped the Bush administration pass the law in 2001, called the results “encouraging.”
The American Federation of Teachers congratulated its members for the improvements in math and in fourth-grade reading, but noted that “many scores were rising faster before No Child Left Behind was enacted.” Fair Test, an antitesting group, made a similar comment.
The results showed striking achievement differences among the states since the law was passed. Massachusetts, for instance, has made spectacular progress in math and good progress in reading in fourth and eighth grade. In New Jersey the percentage of fourth and eighth graders showing proficiency in math has risen significantly.
But achievement has stagnated elsewhere. The percentage of eighth-grade students proficient in math in New York declined to 30 percent this year from 32 percent in 2003, for instance.
The state education commissioner, Richard Mills, focused instead on results showing that New York has been more successful than the nation as a whole in raising the achievement of black and Hispanic students.

Math Scores Up for 4th and 8th Graders
NANCY ZUCKERBROD
The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 25, 2007; 4:58 PM
WASHINGTON — Elementary and middle schoolers posted solid gains in math and more modest improvements in reading in national test results released Tuesday.
The test scores landed in the midst of a raging debate in Congress over renewal of President Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind education law, and provided ammunition for those who want to see it extended with minimal changes.
“If we hadn’t seen progress today, I think it might have been the death knell for renewing the law,” said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s definitely going to give the proponents some evidence that five years into the experiment, we’re seeing some uptick in some parts of the country.”
Bush welcomed the news, calling it proof that his policies are “producing positive results for students across the country.”
The 2002 law requires schools to test students annually in math and reading. Schools that miss benchmarks face increasingly tough consequences, such as having to replace their curriculum, teachers or principals.
The national assessments, sometimes referred to as the nation’s report card, provide the only uniform way to compare student progress in a variety of grades and subjects across the country. The tests were administered nationwide last winter.
Overall, math scores were up for fourth- and eighth-graders at every step on the achievement ladder:
Thirty-nine percent of fourth-graders were rated proficient or better in math, up from 36 percent two years ago, when the test was last given. Hitting the proficient mark is the goal, policymakers say.
Nearly a fifth of the fourth-graders tested still couldn’t do basic-level work, such as subtracting a three-digit number from a four-digit one. But fewer students fell into that category than in 2005.
Among eighth-graders, 32 percent were proficient or better in math, up 2 percentage points from last time.
Seventy-one percent performed at the basic level or better, up from 69 percent two years ago.
The math scores have generally been on a steady upward trajectory since the early 1990s, well before the No Child Left Behind law was enacted.
“In many cases, the cumulative gain has been extraordinary,” said Kathi King, a math teacher in Oakland, Maine who serves on the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the tests. “It’s pretty clear that we must be doing something right.”
Jim Rubillo, executive director of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, says math teachers are getting more on-the-job training than they used to.
“Teachers know more about mathematics,” he said. “They know more about how students learn mathematics.”
There also is a widespread belief that it’s easier for teachers to affect math scores than reading scores, because math is almost entirely a school-based subject while children get varying degrees of exposure to reading at home.
In reading, fourth-grade scores were higher than they were two years ago. But eighth-grade reading scores only moved up a little.
A third of fourth-graders were proficient or better at reading – up 2 percentage points from 2005. Kids working at that level could identify a literary character’s problem and describe how it was solved.
Sixty-seven percent of fourth-graders could do at least basic-level work, up from 64 percent last time.
There was no increase in eighth-graders working at the proficient or advanced levels. About a third could do that level of work, meaning they could identify the literary genre of a story, for example.
Seventy-four percent of eighth-graders could read at a basic level, up 1 percentage point from 2005.
Darvin Winick, chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, said it was discouraging that there wasn’t more progress in eighth-grade reading. He said boosting the reading skills of older children “should be the next national imperative.”
David Gordon, a member of the testing board and the school superintendent in Sacramento, Calif., said educators and policymakers must focus on bringing up the scores of minority students. “We owe it to those kids to make them competitive,” he said.
One goal of No Child Left Behind is to shrink the gap in math and reading scores between minority and white students.
The test results showed the reading achievement gap between black and white fourth-graders narrowed this year, as did the gap between black and white eighth-graders in math. But the gaps in other grades, as well as those between whites and Hispanics, held steady.
Students in the District of Columbia and the following states posted gains in math in both grades: Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Virginia.
In reading, students in the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii and Maryland saw their scores go up in both the fourth and eighth grades.
The states set their own policies regarding the percentage of special education and limited English speakers who take the tests.
Overall nationally, however, more kids with disabilities and limited English skills have been taking the tests in recent years.