Bad news: Utah was one of eight states where 8th-grade students’ reading scores were lower in 2024 than in 2022.
Worse news: No states saw any improvement on the 4th-grade reading or 8th-grade reading or math scores.
Better news: Utah’s 4th-grade reading and math scores and Utah’s 8th-grade math scores remained unchanged (in terms of statistically significant differences).
Good news: 15 states improved in 4th-grade math. And Utah remains better than the nation on all four tests (though there are caveats to that success).
The National Assessment of Education Progress – or the Nation’s Report Card – has been administered to students nationwide by the U.S. Department of Education for decades. It regularly administers four tests: 4th- and 8th-grade tests in reading and math. Based on the scores achieved, students are measured as “advanced,” “proficient,” “basic” or “below basic.”
In Utah, fewer than one-third of Utah’s 8th-grade students are now “proficient” on the reading test.
While states and the nation had been trending upward since 2000 with their proficient percentages on all tests, most states went in the wrong direction in 2022, and some kept heading down in 2024.
While Utah is better than the nation, that difference all but disappears when accounting for household income. The gap between higher-income and lower-income households persists.
Source: NAEP, https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/.
A bit of background: The National Assessment of Education Progress – or NAEP – is billed as the “largest nationally-representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas,” including the arts, civics, geography, mathematics, reading, science, U.S. history, and writing. NAEP data are available at the state level for grades four and eight. NAEP was administered each odd-numbered year from 2003 through 2019 for the mathematics and reading exams and less often for the writing and science exams. It was not administered as planned in 2021 due to the pandemic but instead administered in 2022 and then again in 2024.
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