Student achievement gaps that run along lines of race and gender still persist, and educators' efforts to narrow those differences have led to slow and uneven progress, according to a report being released today.
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That is true nationally as well as in Georgia and South Carolina, according to "State Test Score Trends through 2008-09, Part 2: Slow and Uneven Progress in Narrowing Gaps" by the Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. "Achievement gap" refers to the difference in test results among groups of students along racial, economic or other lines such as disabilities or English language skills.
"This report shows that states can raise student achievement and can narrow achievement gaps," said Jack Jennings, the center's president and chief executive, in a statement. "But it also makes clear that we need to do more. Gaps aren't narrowing fast enough. This is not fair for the students who are behind, and it's not good for the country."
The report examined data from the National Assessment for Educational Progress and state reading and math tests for all 50 states from 2002, the first full year after the No Child Left Behind Act and its standardized testing requirements became law, and 2009, the most recent year for which NAEP results are available.
Both Georgia and South Carolina made changes to their testing programs during that period, so analyses of these states are not as complete as the national report. But the report still had some trend findings for both states.
In general, Georgia's achievement gaps in reading and math narrowed. The clearest results came in eighth-grade reading and 11th-grade math.
In eighth-grade reading, for example, six gaps in the percentage of students passing the state tests narrowed between 2006, when Georgia changed its scoring scale, and 2009, while only one, between Native American and white pupils, got wider.
Because South Carolina started using a new test in 2009 for grades three through eight, the only trends that could be measured through 2009 were on the 10th-grade reading and math exams.
At that grade level, the results were mixed. For example, while four pass-rate achievement gaps in reading (black-white, Hispanic-white, Asian-white, and students with disabilities compared to nondisabled students) narrowed between 2004 -- the first year of the High School Assessment Program tests -- and 2009, four others (Native American-white, low income compared with non-low income, English language learners compared to all students and boys compared to girls) widened. The Asian-white gap actually reversed, with Asian students' pass rates dropping from 71 percent to 67 percent, and white students' pass rates falling from 75 percent to 64 percent. That means the gap was 4 percentage points in favor of white students in 2004, but it was 3 percentage points in favor of Asian students in 2009.
All South Carolina 10th-grade reading pass rates fell between 2004 and 2009.
Nationally, according to the report, it will take as long as two decades or more to close most gaps at the current rates of progress.
"While state test scores are going up, they are going up for all students. That's why gaps are not closing and remain a major national challenge," Jennings said. "We have to move to speed up the progress, especially for Native American students, poor students and boys in reading."
It is so easy to teach children to read and to love books...you start at birth...READ to your kids.....take them to the Library..buy them books...teach them the love of reading......a child who reads well can spell and write circles around non-readers.
You are sooo right betty....I did that with my girls & it paid off.....summer time was also reading time.....for every book they read I paid $$$....soon they did it because they loved to read.
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