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A slide from a Department of Education presentation about the city's NAEP scores

New York City students posted essentially flat scores on a national exam considered the most accurate measure of student progress.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as NAEP, or the nation’s report card, is given every two years to fourth- and eighth-graders across the country. Statewide results, which came out last month, showed that New York was one of just two states to post significant score drops.

In local results released today, city students bucked that trend. Their scores stayed flat or rose or fell by degrees that are not statistically significant.

District-level results were released today for 21 districts across the country that participate in a more detailed study. Only one of the districts, North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg, posted significant gains in reading, and nine districts showed significant gains in math.

Still, only about a third of city fourth-graders met or exceeded NAEP’s benchmark for proficiency in reading and math, about half as many as who met proficiency standards on this year’s state tests. It was the discrepancy between state test scores and NAEP results that triggered state officials to acknowledge last year that the state’s test scores were inflated.

On this year’s NAEP exam, New York City students’ reading scores dropped by three points, the same as statewide. Eighth-graders’ math scores fell by one point, less than the three points that scores across the state declined this year.

Fourth-graders’ reading scores didn’t change, while eighth-graders’ reading scores increased by two points, more than the single point gain experienced statewide and nationally.

None of the city’s shifts since 2009 were considered statistically significant. But gains in fourth- and eighth-grade math scores and fourth-grade reading scores since 2002, when the district’s performance was first measured, are still up significantly. (more…)