NAEP Shows Meaningful Gap-Closing, But Progress Is Slow

Today’s data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show some meaningful progress toward improving academic performance and closing achievement gaps nationally. (It’s also important to note that performance for most groups of students is as high as it has ever been.) There is a lot to digest in these results, but we’ve got several charts that can help you sort through it.

Our analysts have sorted states’ NAEP scores for each of the data sets (fourth-grade math, fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade math, and eighth-grade reading), so you can see how states fared among low-income students and higher-income students and how scores among students of color compare with scores from their white peers. Additional pages at each of these links also show the change in performance over time for each of these groups. And the last page shows the achievement gap by state.

For a rundown of states that stand out and those that continue to struggle, click here.

Stay tuned for further analysis from our K-12 analysts. We’ll update here.