The report, known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” showed a gradual reduction of the achievement gap as black and Hispanic students have made strong gains on math and reading tests.According to the study, Hispanic students made up a third to half of the gulf that had separated their reading scores from the average scores of white students. Similar gains were made in math.
The data, which was released Thursday by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), takes a long term look at scoring trends and is known as the gold standard of assessing these trends. The long-term exams test students at ages 9, 13, and 17 on the same material since the 1970s.
Speaking on a conference call with reporters, NCES associate commissioner Peggy Carr touted the growth of minority students test performance in the past 40 years.
“Black and Hispanic students made larger gains than white students across all these age groups,” Carr said.
