Elementary, middle school students show nationwide gains in math, reading
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009By Kevin Butler, Staff Writer
LONG BEACH - American high school students have shown no gains in reading and math since the 1970s, while their elementary and middle school peers improved over the same period, according to the results of a nationwide assessment released Tuesday.
Since the early 1970s, the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress has been administered to a national sample of 9-, 13- and 17-year-old students in math and reading to get a picture of student performance.
Federal officials on Tuesday released 2008 results, based partly on tests administered to groups of students at four schools in the Long Beach Unified School District. Although the LBUSD contributed, the federal government did not release test results for individual districts or states.