NAEP: Early gains and later losses. Why do American students falter in high school?
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Mark Bauerlein is an Emory University professor and author of "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future."
In this column, he discusses the troubling drop in student scores in high school. He says 4th- and 8th-grade scores mean absolutely nothing unless they are replicated in 12th grade. A gain by 8th-graders is significant only if we see the gain maintained four years later.
By Mark Bauerlein
With so much reporting and discussion of test scores these days, it’s easy to forget a simple fact. This overlook-habit is reinforced whenever the U.S. Department of Education releases its biannual report on math and reading scores for 4th- and 8th-grade NAEP exams that shows steady gains in the past few decades.
In her latest book "The Reign of Error," Diane Ravitch cites those scores and draws the broad conclusion, “Our students have higher test scores in reading and mathematics than they did in the early 1970s or the early 1990s”—evidence that schools are doing better than doomsayers would have us believe.
But here’s the thing. Academic achievement in elementary
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