MARCH 17, 2010 —

This year’s Brown Center Report contains studies taking a long view. Part I examines national test data going back to 1971 from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The study in Part II compares the 1989 test scores of more than 1,000 schools to the same schools’ scores in 2009. Part III compares the test scores of conversion charter schools from 1986, when they operated as traditional public schools, to those from 2008, when they operated as charter schools. The studies tackle perennial questions that, as often happens in education, manifest themselves as controversial topics on the contemporary scene: how to interpret trends in test scores, the distribution of achievement, school turnarounds, and charter schools.

Brown Center Report on American Education

Part I rejects the conventional reaction to the 2009 NAEP scores. Scores in fourth-grade math were unchanged from 2007 to 2009. Eighth-grade scores were up a little. Press articles featured expressions of disappointment and concern, primarily from protagonists who used the flat scores to support policy arguments. Part I places the 2009 scores in the context of the 19-year history of the main NAEP, and after comparing the latest scores with results from other equally trustworthy tests of U.S. math achievement, concludes that the hand-wringing is unwarranted.

So when is a purported NAEP trend really a trend? Part I continues by examining achievement gaps, not between two racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups, but between the nation’s highest- and lowest-achieving students. It focuses on the distribution of academic achievement instead of the direction of average achievement. The