A new federal data report released Thursday by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) showed progress in how the U.S. is educating its children and increasingly narrowing the achievement gap between white and Latino students.
According to The Nations Report Card, which test students at ages 9, 13, and 17 on the same material since the 1970s, black and Latino students at all age levels have made strong gains in their math and reading scores. More significantly, both nine- and 13-year-olds scored higher in reading and mathematics last year than students their age 40 years ago.
“That’s real progress,” said Daria Hall, who directs K-12 at the Washington, D.C.-based education lobbying and advocacy group the Education Trust. “We’ve cut achievement gaps in the early grades by nearly half.”
The report suggested that on a scale of zero to 500, 9-year-old Latino students scored an average of 25 points higher in reading and 32 points higher in math than Latinos in the 1970s. 17-year-old Latinos scored a total of 21 points higher in reading and 17 points higher in math. Overall in reading, the Latino-white score gap was cut in half, decreasing from 41 to 21 between 1975 and 2011-2012.
“It’s important to acknowledge the progress that we have made […],” said Hall. “People say our schools are getting worse but you have some objective evidence of people saying no, that’s not the case.”
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