Taken from the Change the Equation blog, http://changetheequation.org/blog/what%E2%80%99s-state-high-school-education-bad-not-bad-you-think
Have U.S. twelfth graders made any progress in math since the 1970s? The answer is no, if we’re to believe news stories about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which released the results of its long-term math and science tests yesterday. Yet those news stories don’t have it quite right.
It is true that, overall, 17 year olds’ scores barely budged from 1973 to 2012. They rose a scant two points. But things look a bit different when you break down the data by racial and ethnic group. Every group made gains: black students gained 18 points, Hispanic students gained 17 points, Asian students gained six points, and white students gained four points.
The reason for this apparent impossibility? Black and Hispanic students, who unfortunately lag behind their white peers, make up a much bigger share of the population now than they did in 1973. That brings down the total score. (Jack Jennings noted this dynamic several years ago.) Yet those who imply that our students are no better served by the K-12 system than they were 40 years ago are ignoring the evidence.
So should we be popping the champagne corks? Hardly. Progress in high school has been much slower than in elementary and middle schools, where student gains have amounted to several grade levels worth of learning. In fact, high schools seem to be undoing some of the gains made by elementary and middle schools.
But gloomy fatalism and blanket indictments of K-12 won’t do us much good. One lesson NAEP teaches us is that change is possible—we can move the needle when we set our minds to it. We’ve also got to step up our game. Students of color make up a growing share of our school enrollments. If we don’t accelerate the progress we have already made with them, we will pay a very high moral and economic price.
Mean Green Math 