Education is the number one issue in the minds of Americans today. If we are to make intelligent decisions about improving education, we must understand where we are and where we have been. The National Assessment of Educational Progress long-term trend report, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, is our nations only measure of educational progress over the past thirty years. In 1999, approximately 16,000 students took the mathematics and science assessments and over 17,000 students took the reading assessment. Generally, the trends in mathematics and science are characterized by declines in the 1970s, followed by increases during the 1980s and early 1990s, and mostly stable performance since then.
Some modest gains are also evident in reading.
Of all three subjects assessed, students have demonstrated the most improvements in mathematics. We also see increased numbers of students taking advanced mathematics courses. A score that is not significantly different from another score is neither higher nor lower than that score. As a matter of policy, NCES only discusses differences in scale scores that are significantly different. In the charts, you will see a star indicates a significant difference from 1999.