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Report card
America’s falling standards in reading and maths [TEST]
“We can’t be competitive in the 21st century if we continue to slide the way we have,” President Joe Biden warned in October. Mr Biden worries in particular that educational attainment in America is sliding. Recently published scores, from tests taken just before the covid-19 pandemic, show how far.
As part of its “long-term trend” project, more or less every four years since the 1970s the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has administered reading and maths tests to a sample of American students aged nine and 13. There was no test in 2016. The results of the latest, in January 2020, were not good. “This was the first time in the almost 50-year history…of the long-term trend assessments that we observed declines among 13-year-olds,” said Peggy Carr of the part of the Department of Education which oversees the NAEP. Average scores for this age group fell by three points in reading and five points in maths (see chart). (The scales run from zero to 500: a score of 150, for example, indicates ability to carry out simple reading tasks or cope with simple arithmetical facts; 300 denotes facility with “complicated information” in reading or “moderately complex” reasoning in maths.)