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PODCAST | “Freedom to Learn”: Dr. Marty West on NAEP Results, Smartphones, & the Future of National Assessments

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The latest Nation’s Report Card scores are truly terrible: 12th-grade scores reached historic lows, and achievement gaps widened. An alarming number of students are leaving high school without basic math and reading skills.

• Only 22% of 12th-grade students are proficient in math, and only 35% are proficient in reading.
• Almost half of our country’s 12th graders lack basic math skills. 45% of seniors tested below the basic benchmark — the highest portion of students to ever fall below the basic level.
• The gap between high- and low-performing students in math was higher than on all previous assessments.
• Only 33% of students are considered college-ready in math and 35% in reading —a drop from 37% for both categories in 2019, when 12th graders were last tested.
• 8th-grade science scores are dismal, too. Only 31% tested at or above the proficient level, and 38% tested below basic.

Dr. Marty West joined the Freedom to Learn podcast to discuss these dismal test results, the challenges faced by low-performing students, and the need for reliable national assessments. Marty is the academic dean and Henry Lee Shattuck professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a member of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the editor-in-chief of Education Next. Dr. West is also the vice-chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, the independent, nonpartisan board established by Congress that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

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Below is an abridged and lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Watch or listen to our full conversation to learn more about NAEP results and the future of national assessments.

Make sure to follow Freedom to Learn on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released every Thursday.

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Before we delve into the latest NAEP scores, can you explain your role? What is NAGB?

Marty West: NAGB is the National Assessment Governing Board. It is the federal board that oversees and sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, otherwise known as the Nation’s Report Card. The assessments are administered by our colleagues at the National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES.

NAGB plays an important role in shaping the design of the assessments and determining what will be assessed on what schedule. NAGB is made up of about 25 representatives of state and local school systems. It is bipartisan by construction. There is a governor or former governor from the Republican Party and from the Democratic Party. The same is true of the state legislative role. We have state school board members. I’m in that seat as a member of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. We also have educators, both school leaders and teachers, and parents.

This body, NAGB, was designed in the 1980s, early on in the evolution of the NAEP program. And it was really set up to ensure that the program, though it is administered by the federal government, is in service of the needs of our state and local school systems. There is not a single federal official, no member of Congress, or representative of the Department of Education on the board. Rather, it’s to make sure that, although NAEP a federal program, it serves state and local needs.

NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, NAEP Advanced — I’d love for you to define those. In media reporting on NAEP results, there can be confusion about what NAEP proficient is as compared to state assessments and grade-level performance.

Marty West: So one of the roles of NAGB is to set the achievement levels that we use to interpret the results. In order to play that role, we convene educators and experts in the different areas of content that we’re assessing, whether that be math or reading or history or civics or science. And we ask them what students need to know and be able to do in order to perform proficiently in those areas. And proficient is the sort of answer of an expert representative body to that question: “What do students need to know and be able to do in order to succeed in their studies?” In addition to setting that single cut point, which we do present and defend as a reasonable target for all students, we set additional cut points, one representing a more advanced level of mastery of that knowledge and skills, and then one that is a more basic or partial mastery of the skills defined as proficient.

And you’re right that this is different from what state testing programs do. State testing programs are charged with setting proficiency as measured by their own state tests. That is grounded very much in their grade level standards. And so there’s a much closer connection between what they are defining as proficiency and the concept of being on grade level. Now, sometimes states don’t set a particularly demanding definition of proficiency when they’re thinking about what it means to be on grade level in a particular state. But that’s the difference between the two.

There are tools comparing NAEP proficiency and where the states have set the bar. And sometimes the gap is alarming. I live in Virginia, a state that historically has had a pretty big gap between the state definition of proficiency and NAEP proficiency.

Marty West: That’s right. One of the roles NAEP plays is sort of as the Rosetta Stone of American education. Because state standards and tests do vary from one state to the next, we need to find a way to compare their rigor across states. And NAEP provides that common point of comparison. You’re right that there have been some outliers traditionally. And if you look back in the early days of the accountability movement, most states set a relatively undemanding definition of proficiency as compared to the NAEP.

But we’ve seen both convergence and an increase in state standards over time. Virginia, until very recently, was an outlier, and I think it has taken steps to try and close that gap. We’ve also seen a few states in the wake of the pandemic lower their definitions of proficiency, which I think is an unfortunate response to the loss of learning that students experienced during that time period.

There is that NAEP advanced level that you mentioned. We never talk about the fact that there are kids out there performing at a really high advanced level. Do you think it would be valuable to highlight that more?

Marty West: Well, we should be talking about it more because what we are seeing right now, including in these latest 12th-grade and eighth-grade science assessments, is a fanning out of American students’ achievement. So our highest performing students, those in the 75th or even the 90th percentile, are doing essentially as well as ever. But we’ve seen really substantial declines in achievement among our lowest performing students, those in the bottom 25%. They were losing ground prior to the pandemic. They suffered the most as a result of the pandemic-era disruptions to learning. And so this means that we’re seeing both declines in average scores, but also this really substantial increase in inequality. As we think about what’s happening in American students’ achievement overall, we should be trying to think of factors that would be particularly harmful for low-performing students.

The Washington Post reported that, for the 12th-grade NAEP results, “average scores fell to their lowest levels since the current versions of these tests were first administered in both math and reading, as did scores for the lowest performing students.” That achievement gap that you mentioned is there and of great concern. 12th-grade math, let’s start there. Marty, 22% are proficient?

Marty West: That’s right. And it’s the lowest level on record.

But again, I spend more of my time thinking worrying about what’s going on at the basic level where I believe only 45% hit that benchmark. And that means that they are not just not on track to succeed in schools, but really not on track to demonstrate fundamental numeracy skills as they’re leaving our K-12 school systems.

So of 12th-graders who took this test (that was administered January to March 2024), 45% of them are testing below basic. And this isn’t a calculus test, right? For everybody who’s like, ‘well, I wasn’t good at math either’ — below basic, what does that mean?

Marty West: So one way to think about that is to look at some other validation work that NAGB has done over time to try and look at the skills students need to be ready for college-level work without remediation. And when we look at that in math, it is about a third of students who meet that benchmark. So it’s a little more than the share that are defined as proficient, but still only a third of students, really highlighting the fact that American schools are only preparing a subset to be ready for success at the post-secondary level. And below basic is then substantially lower than that level of being ready for college-level work without remediation.

It is not a calculus test. It is focused on the fundamentals of algebra and a little bit of geometry. And I think it is something we should be concerned about.

Only 33% of 12th-grade students were academically prepared for college, based on how NAGB defines it, as compared to 37% in 2019. The percentage of students who have been going on to college is increasing, while their level of preparation has been decreasing. Maybe they shouldn’t be going on to college and racking up debt if the K-12 system has not prepared them for that.

Marty West: I think that’s right. There’s a disconnect there, and it presents a challenge for our institutions of higher education, which need to engage in more remedial work before students are in a position to earn college credits. And that has been a challenge for our higher education system. Oftentimes, students who enter that situation end up with some debt, but no degree — that may be the worst possible outcome.

The other disconnect is between knowledge and skills as measured by NAEP and similar assessments, and the grades students are receiving in high schools. And those grades that students are receiving, the signals that students themselves and their parents are getting about students’ preparation are as high or higher than ever, yet we’re seeing declining knowledge and skills over time, is another cause for concern.

So parents are in the dark. I want parents and community members to know that you might have the sense, ‘well, my kid’s fine or my school’s fine.’ But in releasing these scores, the subgroups are broken out as to how they’re performing. And average math scores, 2024, were lower for 12th graders in the following student groups compared to 2019 — I’m not even going to read all the subgroups because it’s so long— but it’s black, Hispanic, and white students, male and female students, students who are identified and not identified as economically disadvantaged, students with parents across all levels of education (your child is not exempt!), students attending city, suburban, and town schools… It goes on. We have a widespread problem.

Marty West: And that’s really true across grades and subject areas in the recent rounds of NAEP testing. So not just 12th-grade math, but eighth- and fourth-grade math, which we also assess reading across grade levels, and science, U.S. history, and civics. They’re all down. They’re down across virtually all subgroups that we analyze separately. Sometimes you’ll see a subgroup for which there isn’t a statistically significant change. But usually, if you look underneath the hood, you’ll see that it’s a small subgroup and the change just didn’t happen to rise to the level of statistical significance.

Geographically, it’s been very pervasive. We don’t get state-level results for the 12th-grade data, but in fourth- and eighth-grade we do. And there are very few exceptions that have been bucking the trend at the state level.

And the other thing is to know that these declines by and large predate the pandemic. So in the case of 12th grade reading, those scores had their recent peak in 2009 and have been declining since then. In 12th grade math, it was 2015. So we really can’t blame what we’re seeing entirely on the pandemic. We know that those disruptions did harm students, but the challenges that we’re facing predate and go beyond that period.

Let’s talk about 12th-grade reading. Has this test been around longer than 12th-grade math?

Marty West: The framework for the math assessment was updated more recently. One of the roles that NAGB plays is to ensure that the content of the NAEP tests is roughly aligned to what’s being taught in American schools. And around 2005, there was an update that created a new trend line in math.

1992 is the earliest data point that we have that’s comparable to 2024 in reading.

I graduated from high school in 1992. In looking at these 12th-grade reading scores, it bothers me that the lowest-performing students for the recent results recorded an average score of 224 out of what? Out of 500?

Marty West: 500 is the maximum score, that’s right.

…which is the lowest in the history of the test. 2024 scores were 25 points lower than their counterparts scored when the assessment began in 1992. So when I graduated from high school, my peers were doing a lot better than the lowest-performing students in 2024. And the average score was 10 points lower. So my peers were doing a lot better on average. This is not the direction that we want K-12 education to be heading, getting worse over a very long period of time.

For 12th-grade reading, 35% of students are proficient. And as you’ve pointed out, the important percentage to pay attention to here is the percentage of students testing below basic. And that was, I believe, 32%. Not good news.

Marty West: No, it’s not good news. I think when we’re analyzing the very long-term changes all the way back to 1992, we do need to keep in mind that not all students in the American education system make it all the way to 12th grade. And the share that do has increased over time. So there’s part of that that could be a function of more students, including lower-achieving students, being present in 12th grade.

But that is not a very credible explanation for the changes we’ve seen over the past decade or so. And it’s hard to pin down precisely exactly how much of the long-term story that you’re telling could be due to that fact.

I know there’s kind of this general sense out there that 10 points is about the equivalent of a year. Is NAGB comfortable saying that, or do you not endorse that view?

Marty West: We don’t endorse that, and our colleagues at the National Center on Education Statistics, in particular, have expressed some concern about that. That being said, used cautiously as a rough benchmark, I think it can be a useful point of comparison, and many researchers whom I respect find that to be a useful tool for interpreting the changes in the NAEP scores over time.

It just came to mind when I was looking at this result of 25 points lower for the lowest-performing students. That’s two and a half years behind my counterparts back when I was graduating from high school. And I hear you, [more] people may have been dropping out back in the day, but still, that’s an alarming statistic.

When we’re talking about students who are testing below basic, they’re not able to find the details in a text to help them understand its meaning. This is not people mastering Shakespeare and then taking a 12th-grade test on it. This is basic stuff.

Marty West: That’s absolutely right. I do think it’s reasonable to think about the students who are not meeting that basic level of proficiency as not being on track to be functionally literate or numerate as adults.

I’ve been thinking about how we say, ‘well, college isn’t for everyone.’ So they can go to technical school, or they can get an apprenticeship. There are other paths, which is wonderful. And absolutely, that’s something that we should endorse. When you go to a technical school, when you go down the apprenticeship path,you still need to be able to read the technical manuals. You still need to have basic math and reading skills. So we can’t just say it will be fine. It’s not fine.

Marty West: That’s absolutely right. There’s all this talk about 21st-century skills, and maybe it will be the case that social skills are more important, but basic math and reading skills are just about as important as ever. If you look at trying to explain success in the labor market, it’s not as if other skills are displacing literacy and numeracy. It’s that other things have become important alongside those skills. And I think you just gave a nice example of why high-quality career and technical education right now does require students to have fundamental literacy and numeracy skills in order for them to succeed.

Higher absenteeism was reported in the NAEP results, but I want to be mindful of your time and address the eighth-grade science quickly. Any good news from eighth-grade science?

Marty West: Well, eighth-grade science is one of the areas where we hadn’t seen a decline prior to 2019, the last pre-pandemic data point, though we had seen a decline in fourth-grade science. So again, I see more similarity than differences across all of the NAEP assessments that have been conducted in the post-pandemic era. They also show substantial declines relative to the last pre-pandemic data point. But in virtually all cases, that was an acceleration of a trend that had emerged prior to that time.

We’re talking about 38% of students testing below basic for eighth-grade science. I have two high schoolers, and I can tell you high school science is hard. So sending those kids into high school without the skills to navigate that is concerning. Anything else on the NAEP results?

Marty West: Well, I think we should start to think about some of the potential explanations for what we’re seeing. The NAEP program is designed to tell us what’s happening to student achievement rather than why, but the patterns that we see can guide and inform our search for potential culprits. And so it seems to me that we’re looking at something that emerged really in the early part of the 2010s that affects achievement across all subject areas and that is disproportionately harmful for our lowest-achieving students while leaving the very top of the distribution largely untouched. We should also say we’re seeing similar trends in achievement across many other developed democracies on international assessments. So maybe we should be thinking about some explanations that transcend geographic boundaries.

And as I think about what really ticks all those boxes, it seems to me that we need to be looking hard at the emergence of smartphones and social media targeting youth. And I think we need to be thinking hard about strategies to try to combat that source of distraction.

I also think that the softening of accountability policies in the 2010s may have played a role, particularly with respect to low-achieving students. The era from the 1990s through around 2010 was an era where we saw steadily increasing achievement on the NAEP that was driven by faster-than-average gains for lowest-achieving students, who were the focus of those test-based accountability policies. So those gains weren’t always as rapid or as large as we wanted them to be, but there was a period where the National Assessment of Educational Progress was documenting progress rather than not living up to its name.

Progress, but we weren’t fabulous.

Marty West: Well, we never succeeded in closing demographic gaps in achievement that were the motivation for a lot of education reform. But I would put the amount of progress that we made, again, from the 1990s to 2010, I think that is a significant accomplishment. It is responsible for explaining improvements in employment and declines in teenage pregnancy for the states that led the charge, and a lot of good came from that period.

I’m wondering what your thoughts are on NAEP’s future and the importance of keeping NAEP out there as a reminder that we need to be doing better.

Marty West: Well, the NAEP program is the only source of evidence on what American students know and are able to do that is nationally representative, that is comparable over time, and that is comparable from one place to the next. And so in that view, it plays a really essential role in our ability to stay informed about American students’ progress, their lack thereof, or as we’ve seen in recent years, their regression.

And as we enter a period where we may see an increased role for state governments relative to the federal government, the importance of NAEP only becomes more important. It’s only with comparable data from one state to the next that we’ll be able to determine which states are succeeding, which states have lessons that others can learn from, and allow us to take advantage of the federal structure of the American education system.

When we talk about restructuring the Department of Education, devolving power out of Washington to states, I think I hear you saying, ‘but let’s keep NAEP in place.’

Marty West: You hear that loud and clear. So far, it seems to me that the Trump administration has agreed with you. They have been on the record about the importance of the NAEP program and their intention to keep it in place, even if they suggest that its home and structure may evolve.

Any thoughts on IES, which is the umbrella organization over NCES (the administrator of the NAEP)? Thoughts on where NAEP needs to be housed, on what needs to happen with IES?

Marty West: I think the most important principle is that the NAEP program needs to remain independent of the Department of Education and under the oversight of a body like the National Assessment Governing Board that, again, is made up of state and local rather than federal officials and that has the appropriate expertise. I should have mentioned earlier that we also have designated roles for psychometricians and subject area experts on that board. And, you know, they need to ensure that the NAEP remains an independent, reliable, and authoritative source of information.

One of the things I like to point out is that the NAEP is the only standardized test that I’m familiar with that, when you see coverage of it in the media, it is taken for granted that it is a reliable barometer of student progress. Half of the article isn’t people complaining about whether this is a reliable indicator of student success. And I think that reflects the success of the governance structure that was set up in the mid-1980s to oversee the program. And we need to make sure that the core of that structure remains.

As we wrap up, we like to dispel myths here on Freedom to Learn. Is there a NAEP myth that you’d want to address today?

Marty West: Maybe the myth that it is a, strictly speaking, a federal program. Yes, the federal government pays the bills. The Department of Education — the Secretary of Education — makes appointments to the National Assessment Governing Board. But again, by design, the NAEP program is responsive to the needs of American educators and American families.

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Listen to our full Freedom to Learn conversation on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. If you have suggestions for future guests or topics, please send them to podcast@dfipolicy.org.

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