Average Reading Level of High School Seniors

American high schoolers are approaching graduation with less of a grasp on reading and still-low math scores – and that'south before factoring in the pandemic.

The average reading score for high school seniors dropped betwixt 2015 and 2019, while math scores for those soonhoped-for-graduates remained apartment, co-ordinate to the latest round of national examination results released Wednesday.

And just as in many other aspects of American society, the divide between the academic haves and have-nots keeps growing. The most-adept twelfth graders – those with scores at the top of their class – are scoring amend in reading than they did nearly 30 years ago. The least-proficient twelfth course readers are even farther behind than they were in 1992, with scores that declined in that fourth dimension menstruum.

The latest wait at reading and math achievement for students on the cusp of graduating comes from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, as well known as the Nation's Report Menu. The exams are overseen by a branch of the federal government.

The declines for seniors resemble the refuse in reading scores for 4th- and eighth-grade students, where the least-proficient students are losing the most ground. National exam results for the younger students were released in Oct 2019.

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The pattern of decline concentrated amongst the lowest-performing students – across multiple course levels and subjects – is an urgent problem, said Peggy Carr, the testing agency'south associate commissioner of cess.

In math, the overall average score for twelfth graders held steady between 2015 and 2019. Simply beneath that boilerplate is a familiar trend: Scores for the lowest-performing students dipped. Since 2005, the but seniors to post a little improvement in math were those in the highest-performing bracket.

That'due south, of class, a good thing for those high achievers – nearly of whom tend to come from economically stable backgrounds. Simply information technology'south worrisome for the futures of the lowest-performing students, who tend to be economically disadvantaged.

All races are represented in those lowest-performing students, but Black and Latino students make upwards the largest share, Carr said.

How practice the NAEP exams piece of work?

The national assessments were given to more than 52,000 public and private school twelfth graders between January 2019 and March 2019. Student performance is grouped into categories such as bones, proficient or advanced.

The bar for proficiency is high: Simply 24% of seniors scored at or above "skilful" in math in 2019. That figure hasn't inverse significantly since 2005, the first administration of this math cess for seniors.

Meanwhile, the per centum of seniors scoring "beneath basic" in math increased to 40% in 2019, up from 38% in 2015.

In reading, 37% of seniors scored at or above proficient in 2019. That's about the same as in 2015, but down from 1992, when forty% of U.S. seniors scored at least proficient on the exam.

The exams also survey students virtually what they're doing inside and outside the classroom. Half of seniors in 2019 said they read literature outside of school at least one time or twice a year. Around ane in iv seniors said they never read stories or novels outside of school.

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Why are scores however then low?

A number of factors could explain the stagnation and disparities in scores, assessment experts said.

Loftier school graduation rates have improved, which means more lower-performing students are staying in school – and therefore are part of the testing pool. Student poverty rates accept increased, and poverty generally tracks with lower bookish performance. And, as technology and broadband internet have become increasingly necessary for learning, the U.Due south. also has been wracked past major disparities in access, laid blank recently by the pandemic and remote learning.

Andrea Johnson, an English language teacher at Salem Loftier School in Virginia, said her school also has seen a rapid rise in the number of students learning English.

"That's going to affect reading test scores," said Johnson, who is also Virginia's 2020 teacher of the twelvemonth.

Virginia has pushed schools to double-down on literacy educational activity since the last round of NAEP scores, Johnson said. At all grade levels, teachers are helping lower-performing readers past giving them a text that's at their level, paired with a text that'due south on course level, so they can understand the fabric while likewise makingcomparisons, she said.

Teachers too accept to figure out ways to meliorate claw students on reading, she added.

"How do we balance the literary canon and texts they need for understanding with student choice, where they tin read something where they run across themselves reflected every bit the hero?" Johnson said.

Sarah Brown Wessling, an English teacher at Johnston Loftier School in Iowa, has been pedagogy for 23 years. Moving students to proficiency hinges on an enormous number of factors, she said.

In school, that could mean making sure teachers have enough time to give all students individual attending. Or it could hateful retaining teachers of colour then that an increasingly diverse student population sees themselves represented in the people guiding them.

School and success do not operate in isolation from the rest of society, she added.

"If we're not talking most the big film, from health care to mental health and even clearing, and so we're not really serious almost moving students from Indicate A to Point B," Brown Wessling said. "Otherwise, we're really good at moving students who are already winning."

Contact Erin Richards at (414) 207-3145 or erin.richards@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @emrichards.

Average Reading Level of High School Seniors

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2020/10/27/reading-level-math-test-scores-high-school-seniors/3746305001/

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