The ledes on yesterday’s NAEP numbers in papers across the country this morning:
“The basic math and reading skills of USA students have slowly, surely improved over the past 30 to 40 years, new findings show, with sharp increases among many of the nation’s lowest-performing students – especially in the past four years” – USA Today
“U.S. high-school students haven’t achieved any significant gains in reading or math for nearly four decades” - Wall Street Journal
“Math and reading scores for 9- and 13-year-olds have risen since the 2002 enactment of No Child Left Behind, providing fuel to those who want to renew the federal law and strengthen its reach in high schools” — Washington Post
“The achievement gap between white and minority students has not narrowed in recent years, despite the focus of the No Child Left Behind law on improving the scores of blacks and Hispanics” — New York Times
The nation’s 9- and 13-year-olds are doing better in math and reading than they did decades ago, test results released Tuesday show” — Atlanta Journal Constitution
“American 17-year-olds aren’t performing any better in reading and math than their bell-bottom-clad counterparts in the early 1970s” — Christian Science Monitor
So many blind men. Such a big elephant.
Brilliant! Were these people looking at the same set of data? It certainly doesn’t appear that way.