ÉçÇøºÚÁÏ

When people hear that achievement scores — including on the latest NAEP — are down yet again, their first assumption might be that student performance is declining across the board.

But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, across a range of tests, grade levels and subject areas, the scores of the lowest-performing students have fallen dramatically, while the scores of the highest-performing students have been flat or close to it.

The next assumption might be that these declines must be tied to long-running achievement gaps. Indeed, it is and remains true that white and Asian students tend to do better than their Black and Latino peers, and children with disabilities and those who are not native English speakers tend to do worse than average.

But over the last decade, declines have not been about specific student groups. Instead, the story is largely about a growing divergence between higher- and lower-performing kids.

To see this visually, consider the latest in 12^th grade math. As the chart above shows, scores were rising from 2005 to 2013. Not only that, but they were rising the fastest for the lowest-performing students, those in the bottom 10%.

But scores peaked in 2013 and then began falling, especially for the lowest-performing kids. While the performance of the top 12^th graders didn’t fall that much, even during COVID, scores for the lowest-performing students had fallen 6 points by 2019 and have plummeted another 5 points since then.

Looking at the graph, it’s clear there is a cascading effect down the performance spectrum. Students in the middle have lost far more ground than those at the very top, and kids at the very bottom have seen even steeper declines.

What’s more, these patterns in test after test. It’s worth unpacking the data a bit further to understand how these trends are playing out across groups. The first table below looks at the changes from 2013 to 2024 for the top and bottom 10% of students across racial and ethnic categories in 12^th grade math. 

Change in 12^th grade NAEP Math Scores By Student Race/Ethnicity and Performance Level (2013-2024)

The scores for Black and Hispanic students fell across the performance spectrum. But that’s not the main story here, because the bottom was falling so much faster than the top across all racial and ethnic groups. In fact, the lowest-performing white students showed the biggest declines.
Sorting the data by income, the same pattern holds:

Change in 12^th grade NAEP Math Scores By Student Income and Performance Level (2013-2024)

Again, low-income students scored worse than higher-income students. But the bottom 10% percent of students who do not qualify as low-income suffered the biggest slide.

Tim Daly has documented according to parental education levels for eighth grade math, and that holds for 12^th grade scores as well. Even among students whose parents graduated from college, the lowest performers suffered particularly large declines:

Change in 12^th grade NAEP Math Scores By Parental Education and Performance Level (2013-2024)

In 12^th grade math, at least, the scores of students with disabilities and English learners have actually held up pretty well. Performance rose 0.4 points for students with disabilities and 2.5 points for English learners. Neither group saw declines among the lowest performers.

But consider what happened to students without disabilities (scores for the bottom 10% fell 11.9 points) and native English speakers (the bottom plummeted by 10.1 points).

What’s behind these trends? The best evidence to a of in-school and out-of-school factors including screen time, instructional shifts that de-emphasize mastery of basic skills and the lack of school-level accountability for results. It may sound counterintuitive, but policymakers looking to raise the ceiling on student achievement should start by making sure they raise the floor.

Disclosures: The Future of High School Network and ÉçÇøºÚÁÏ both receive financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, XQ and the Walton Family Foundation.

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