Education Data Elicit Hope and Concern
The U.S. has been hit with a barrage of education data over the last two weeks. For those who care about employee skill levels, the data are cause for both hope and concern. The data come from two main sources: the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and college entrance exams, especially the SAT.
First the good news. U.S. students have gotten progressively better at math. The NAEP shows that math scores among all age groups have been on the rise over the last 20 years. And the most recent SAT scores on the math portion were at a 30-year high.
Even the SAT verbal score, which has leveled off over the last five years, can be seen as a kind of good news. “Verbal scores are holding steady even though more of today’s college-bound high school students than ever before have English as their second language or have parents who aren’t native English speakers,” states College Board president Gaston Caperton. In fact, there’s been a 47% increase in the number of foreign-born and first-generation American test-takers since 1987. Another welcome development is that the gap between the average verbal scores of men and women is closing.
The SAT scores of black and Latino students have also tended to rise over the last ten years. When SAT scores were first presented by race, the number of black SAT and ACT test-takers combined was equal to 20% of all black 18-year-olds. Since then, it has almost doubled, rising to 38%. “This big growth in black students aiming for college should result in lower average scores, because test-taking is no longer restricted only to the brightest black students. Yet average black scores have risen while the share of the age group taking tests has also grown,” reports the New York Times.
Now the bad news. Reading and science scores on the NAEP generally stagnated during the 1990s. In fact, science scores for 17-year-olds remain lower than they were 30 years ago. Perhaps even more disconcerting is that, in many areas, the NAEP scoring gaps between white students and their Latino and black counterparts have either stayed steady or grown since the late 1980s. For example, the 1999 gap between whites and blacks in reading among 13-year-olds was 29 points, compared with 20 points in 1990. In the same period, the gap in math scores grew to 32 points from 21 points among 17-year-olds. “This is a depressing reversal of the gains made in the previous two decades,” states Prof. Michael Nettles, vice-chairman of the U.S. Education Department’s National Assessment Governing Board. Academically speaking, some of the gaps are quite serious. For example, black 17-year-olds scored an average of 264 on the reading test, lower than the 267 average for 13-year-old white students.
SAT scores also show a growing gap between white and Asian students, on one hand, and Latinos and blacks on the other. The LA Times reports, “The growing gap along ethnic lines in the last decade disturbs some educators, who fear that Latinos and blacks will have an even tougher time competing for the limited number of seats at the nation’s most selective colleges. About 90% of four-year colleges and universities rely on SAT scores to help pick their freshman class.”
What makes such gaps and reversals particularly hard to bear is that some experts feel sure they know how to address the problems. A recently published report from the RAND research organization looked at how students in individual states have performed on the NAEP over the years. It found, “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.” As for how students perform on the SATs, this is linked to the degree to which they take challenging courses in high school, especially Advanced Placement classes. Unfortunately, these courses are much more common in suburban high schools, where students are more likely to be white or Asian, than in urban high schools, where students are mostly black or Latino. But there are even significant educational achievement gaps between suburban blacks and whites, a subject referred to in Reaching the Top, a report from the College Board’s National Task Force on Minority High Achievement. The report makes a number of suggestions about how the U.S. can raise the achievement levels of minority students.
Some experts believe that one way to boost the academic achievement of minority students, especially in the field of business, is to increase minority representation among business professors. “We felt if we could create a more diverse business school faculty, we would have a better chance of attracting minorities to study business,” states Bernard Milano, executive director at the KPMG Foundation, in HR Magazine. Working in partnership with the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, the foundation has created its PhD Project. “Currently, 373 black, Native American and Hispanic students are in the PhD Project,” reported HR Magazine, “working toward doctorates in 80 universities across the country. Among the sponsors helping fund their studies are Chrysler, Ford, Citibank and Merrill Lynch as well as KPMG.” The project is helping minority candidates pursue their Ph.D.s in business areas such as management, marketing, finance, accounting and information systems.
====================================================
Student scores on the NAEP can be found at
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/site/home.asp
For an analysis of the NAEP findings, please see
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000824_2043.html
Information on recent SAT scores can be found at
http://www.collegeboard.org/press/senior00/html/000829.html
An LA Times article on the SAT gap can be found at
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/updates/lat_sat000830.htm
To read Reaching the Top, please see
http://www.collegeboard.org/press/html9900/html/991017r.html
The RAND Institute’s “Improving Student Achievement: What NAEP State Test Scores Tell Us” can be found at
http://www.rand.org/hot/Press/naepscores.html
To learn more about the PhD Project, please see
http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/articles/0300covb.htm
First the good news. U.S. students have gotten progressively better at math. The NAEP shows that math scores among all age groups have been on the rise over the last 20 years. And the most recent SAT scores on the math portion were at a 30-year high.
Even the SAT verbal score, which has leveled off over the last five years, can be seen as a kind of good news. “Verbal scores are holding steady even though more of today’s college-bound high school students than ever before have English as their second language or have parents who aren’t native English speakers,” states College Board president Gaston Caperton. In fact, there’s been a 47% increase in the number of foreign-born and first-generation American test-takers since 1987. Another welcome development is that the gap between the average verbal scores of men and women is closing.
The SAT scores of black and Latino students have also tended to rise over the last ten years. When SAT scores were first presented by race, the number of black SAT and ACT test-takers combined was equal to 20% of all black 18-year-olds. Since then, it has almost doubled, rising to 38%. “This big growth in black students aiming for college should result in lower average scores, because test-taking is no longer restricted only to the brightest black students. Yet average black scores have risen while the share of the age group taking tests has also grown,” reports the New York Times.
Now the bad news. Reading and science scores on the NAEP generally stagnated during the 1990s. In fact, science scores for 17-year-olds remain lower than they were 30 years ago. Perhaps even more disconcerting is that, in many areas, the NAEP scoring gaps between white students and their Latino and black counterparts have either stayed steady or grown since the late 1980s. For example, the 1999 gap between whites and blacks in reading among 13-year-olds was 29 points, compared with 20 points in 1990. In the same period, the gap in math scores grew to 32 points from 21 points among 17-year-olds. “This is a depressing reversal of the gains made in the previous two decades,” states Prof. Michael Nettles, vice-chairman of the U.S. Education Department’s National Assessment Governing Board. Academically speaking, some of the gaps are quite serious. For example, black 17-year-olds scored an average of 264 on the reading test, lower than the 267 average for 13-year-old white students.
SAT scores also show a growing gap between white and Asian students, on one hand, and Latinos and blacks on the other. The LA Times reports, “The growing gap along ethnic lines in the last decade disturbs some educators, who fear that Latinos and blacks will have an even tougher time competing for the limited number of seats at the nation’s most selective colleges. About 90% of four-year colleges and universities rely on SAT scores to help pick their freshman class.”
What makes such gaps and reversals particularly hard to bear is that some experts feel sure they know how to address the problems. A recently published report from the RAND research organization looked at how students in individual states have performed on the NAEP over the years. It found, “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.” As for how students perform on the SATs, this is linked to the degree to which they take challenging courses in high school, especially Advanced Placement classes. Unfortunately, these courses are much more common in suburban high schools, where students are more likely to be white or Asian, than in urban high schools, where students are mostly black or Latino. But there are even significant educational achievement gaps between suburban blacks and whites, a subject referred to in Reaching the Top, a report from the College Board’s National Task Force on Minority High Achievement. The report makes a number of suggestions about how the U.S. can raise the achievement levels of minority students.
Some experts believe that one way to boost the academic achievement of minority students, especially in the field of business, is to increase minority representation among business professors. “We felt if we could create a more diverse business school faculty, we would have a better chance of attracting minorities to study business,” states Bernard Milano, executive director at the KPMG Foundation, in HR Magazine. Working in partnership with the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, the foundation has created its PhD Project. “Currently, 373 black, Native American and Hispanic students are in the PhD Project,” reported HR Magazine, “working toward doctorates in 80 universities across the country. Among the sponsors helping fund their studies are Chrysler, Ford, Citibank and Merrill Lynch as well as KPMG.” The project is helping minority candidates pursue their Ph.D.s in business areas such as management, marketing, finance, accounting and information systems.
====================================================
Student scores on the NAEP can be found at
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/site/home.asp
For an analysis of the NAEP findings, please see
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000824_2043.html
Information on recent SAT scores can be found at
http://www.collegeboard.org/press/senior00/html/000829.html
An LA Times article on the SAT gap can be found at
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/updates/lat_sat000830.htm
To read Reaching the Top, please see
http://www.collegeboard.org/press/html9900/html/991017r.html
The RAND Institute’s “Improving Student Achievement: What NAEP State Test Scores Tell Us” can be found at
http://www.rand.org/hot/Press/naepscores.html
To learn more about the PhD Project, please see
http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/articles/0300covb.htm