The release of the nation’s NAEP scores last week can tell us several things about the current state of learning in America’s public schools. But unlike politicos and pundits who are using those scores for alarmist social-media fodder, I’d suggest we take a breath and adopt a more reasoned reaction. NAEP – the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly called “the Nation’s Report Card” – is a standardized test of math and reading taken every two years by randomly selected fourth- and eighth-grade students (450,000 in 10,000 schools). The results released last week from the tests administered in early 2022 were obviously disappointing; there’s no denying the decline.
