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Rising
Math Scores Suggest Education Reforms are Working
Link to this study
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RAND Contact: Jess Cook |
RAND
1700 Main Street P. O. Box 2138 Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 1200 South Hayes Street Arlington, Virginia 22202-5050 703-413-1100 |
RISING MATH SCORES SUGGEST EDUCATION
REFORMS ARE WORKING
STATE ACHIEVEMENT DIFFERENCES TIED TO SPENDING, POLICIES
TEXAS FIRST, CALIFORNIA LAST IN TEST SCORES OF SIMILAR STUDENTS
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 25 — The education reforms of the 1980s and 1990s seem to be working, according to a new RAND report, but some states are doing far better than others in making achievement gains and in elevating their students’ performance compared with students of similar racial and socioeconomic background in other states. Texas and Indiana are high performers on both these counts.
The study is based on an analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests given between 1990 and 1996. The authors rank the 44 participating states by raw achievement scores, by scores that compare students from similar families, and by score improvements. They also analyze which policies and programs account for the substantial differences in achievement across states that can’t be explained by demographics. Here are the key findings:
- Math scores are rising across the country at a national average rate
of about one percentile point per year, a pace outstripping that of
the previous two decades and suggesting that public education reforms
are taking hold. Progress is far from uniform, however. One group of
states – led by North Carolina and Texas and including Michigan,
Indiana and Maryland – boasts gains about twice as great as the
national average. Another group – including Wyoming, Georgia, Delaware
and Utah – shows minuscule gains or none at all. Most states fall
in between.
- Even more dramatic contrasts emerge in the study’s pathbreaking, cross-state comparison of achievement by students from similar families. Texas heads the class in this ranking with California dead last. Wisconsin, Montana, Iowa, Maine, North Dakota, Indiana and New Jersey cluster closely behind Texas. Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama and Rhode Island perform almost as dismally as California.
- Although the two states are close demographic cousins, Texas students,
on average, scored 11 percentile points higher on NAEP math and reading
tests than their California counterparts. In fact, the Texans performed
well with respect to most states. On the 4th-grade NAEP math tests in
1996, Texas non-Hispanic white students and black students ranked first
compared to their counterparts in other states, while Hispanic students
ranked fifth. On the same test, California non-Hispanic white students
ranked third from the bottom, black students last, and Hispanic students
fourth from the bottom among states.
- Differences in state scores for students with similar families can
be explained, in part, by per pupil expenditures and how these funds
are allocated. States at the top of the heap generally have lower pupil-teacher
ratios in lower grades, higher participation in public prekindergarten
programs and a higher percentage of teachers who are satisfied with
the resources they are provided for teaching. These three factors account
for about two-thirds of the Texas-California differential. Teacher turnover
also has a statistically significant effect on achievement. (California
is now implementing class-size reduction and other reforms but these
steps began after the 1996 NAEP tests.)
- Having a higher percentage of teachers with master’s degrees
and extensive teaching experience appears to have comparatively little
effect on student achievement across states. Higher salaries also showed
little effect, possibly reflecting the inefficiency of the current compensation
system in which pay raises reward both high- and low-quality teachers.
However, the report points out that salary differences may have more
important achievement effects within states than between states. Also,
they may have greater impact during periods when teachers are in shorter
supply than during the 1990–1996 measurement period.
- To raise achievement scores, the most efficient and effective use
of education dollars is to target states with higher proportions of
minority and disadvantaged students with funding for lower pupil-teacher
ratios, more widespread prekindergarten efforts, and more adequate teaching
resources. As for teacher salaries and education, the report adds, "efforts
to increase the quality of teachers in the long run are important, but
… significant productivity gains can be obtained with the current
teaching force if their working conditions are improved."
- The most plausible explanation for the remarkable rate of math gains by North Carolina and Texas is the integrated set of policies involving standards, assessment and accountability that both states implemented in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The RAND study, led by David Grissmer, is based on NAEP tests given in 1990, 1992, 1994 and 1996 to representative samples of 2,500 students from the 44 voluntarily participating states. Five tests were given in mathematics and two in reading at either the 4th- or 8th-grade level. Not all of the states took all of the tests. And there were too few reading tests to permit a separate analysis of those results. Taken together, however, the tests provided the first set of data permitting statistically valid achievement comparisons across states. The researchers used data from the census and from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey to establish the student samples’ family characteristics.
The 1998 NAEP reading and math scores became available too late to be incorporated in this analysis. "We’re examining those data now, however, and we find that the state rankings change little and our findings about which policies make the most difference aren’t affected at all," Grissmer declares.
"Our results certainly challenge the traditional view of public education as ‘unreformable’," he concludes. "But the achievement of disadvantaged students is still substantially affected by inadequate resources. Stronger federal compensatory programs are required to address this inequity."
Grissmer’s coauthors include Ann Flanagan, Jennifer Kawata and Stephanie Williamson. Improving Student Achievement: What NAEP Test Scores Tell Us was supported by the ExxonMobil Foundation, the Danforth Foundation, the NAEP Secondary Analysis Program, the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence and by RAND.
RAND is a nonprofit organization that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis.
