Grades Rise, but Reading Skills Do Not
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
Published: February 23, 2007
High school students nationwide are taking seemingly tougher courses and earning better grades, but their reading skills are not improving through the effort, according to two federal reports released here Thursday that cite grade inflation as a possible explanation.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, an exam commonly known as the nation's report card, found that the reading skills of 12th graders tested in 2005 were significantly worse than those of students in 1992, when a comparable test was first given, and essentially flat since students previously took the exam in 2002.
The test results also showed that the overwhelming majority of high school seniors have not fully mastered high-school-level math.
At the same time, however, grade-point averages have risen nationwide, according to a separate survey by the National Assessment, of the transcripts of 26,000 students, which compared them with a study of students' coursework in 1990.
''There's a disconnect between what we want and expect our 12th graders to know and do, and what our schools are actually delivering through instruction in the classroom,'' David W. Gordon, the superintendent of schools in Sacramento, said at a news conference announcing the results.
The reports offered several rationales for the disparity between rising grade-point averages and tougher coursework on the one hand and stagnant reading scores on the other, including ''grade inflation, changes in grading standards'' or the possibility that student grades were being increasingly affected by things like classroom participation or extra assignments.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered the yardstick for academic performance because it is the only test taken all across the country. The test of 12th-grade achievement was given to a representative sample of 21,000 high school seniors attending 900 public and private schools from January to March 2005.
It showed that the share of 12th-grade students lacking even basic high school reading skills -- meaning they could not, for example, extract data about train fares at different times of day from a brochure -- rose to 27 percent from 20 percent in 1992.
The share of students proficient in reading dropped to 35 percent from 40 percent in 1992. At the same time, the gap between boys and girls grew, with girls' reading skills more than a year ahead those of boys.
In math, only 23 percent of all 12th graders were proficient, but the exam has been revamped, so the results could not be compared with those from earlier years, officials said. The new test has fewer questions requiring arithmetic and more using algebra and geometry. Some 39 percent of 12th graders lacked even basic high school math skills.
These results came about even though the separate study of transcripts showed that 12th graders in 2005 averaged 360 more hours of classroom instruction during their high school years than students had in 1990.
Their overall grade-point average was 2.98 -- just shy of a B. That was one-third of a letter grade higher than in 1990. The share of students taking a standard curriculum or better, intended to prepare them for college, jumped to 68 percent from 40 percent.
In math, girls had higher grades than boys, and closed the achievement gap, scoring about as well as boys did on the national assessment. Boys who had taken advanced math and science courses, however, scored higher than girls who had also taken such courses.
The Bush administration, which has been pressing to expand testing in high school under the federal education law, No Child Left Behind, seized upon the results as proof that high schools were not measuring up.
''The consensus for strengthening our high schools has never been stronger,'' Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, said in a statement released in advance of the report. ''Schools must prepare students to succeed in college and the 21st-century work force.''
Just how students can be getting better grades in classes that are supposedly more challenging yet lag in reading may become clearer in the future. Mark Schneider, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the branch of the Education Department that administers the exams, had also collected a warehouse full of course descriptions, reading lists and textbooks to investigate the actual content of classes students are taking.
The Education Trust, a nonprofit group representing urban schools, attributed the disparity to a kind of academic false advertising, saying that schools may seem to offer the same courses to all students, but that the content of those courses is sometimes less demanding for poor and minority children.
For example, the group found, a ninth-grade English teacher at one school assigned students a two- to three-page essay comparing the themes of Homer's ''Odyssey'' to those in the movie ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' At the same school, assignments in another class covering the same material were considerably less demanding. There, students broke up into three clusters, with one designing a brochure for ''Odyssey Cruises,'' another drawing pictures and the third making up a crossword using characters from the ''Odyssey.''
''Just slapping new names on courses with weak curriculum and ill-prepared teachers won't boost achievement,'' Kati Haycock, the Education Trust's president, said.