Tom Loveless, The Brown Center on Education Policy, The Brookings Institution
September 2001
Last year's inaugural Brown Center Report on American Education-which found, inter alia, that many federally-recognized "blue ribbon" schools were none too effective-made quite a splash. (And federal officials responded, recently announcing that academic excellence will henceforth be the primary factor in selecting award recipients.) This year's report, authored by Brown Center Director Tom Loveless, may also ruffle a few education feathers. The first of its three sections takes a close look at reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)-analyzing NAEP's several versions-and draws different conclusions than much-publicized recent studies by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the National Education Goals Panel (NEGP). But the analysis is complicated, due to the fact that different versions of the NAEP test yield different results over time. In general, Loveless finds, math results are improving while reading is stagnating. He speculates that this is because "math achievement is more dependent on 'within-school' activities and responds more quickly to curriculum changes," while reading achievement is more highly influenced by activities and experiences outside the classroom, rendering it more difficult to change. In part two of the report, Loveless looks into international comparisons, briefly recounting America's dismal performance on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study-Repeat (TIMSS-R), which placed the U.S. near the middle of world achievement. He then presents the findings of a new survey that the Brown Center conducted this past school year to determine how challenging American high school classes were for foreign exchange students compared to classes in the students' native countries. A whopping 56% of the 500 students surveyed labeled U.S. classes as much easier; 29% described them as a little easier. Just 11% found them harder. The report's final section seeks to estimate "the achievement gaps that urban schools must overcome to reach parity with their urban and suburban counterparts." It concludes that we cannot think of urban schools as monolithic because of the tremendous variation among them. Urban schools in the Sun Belt, for instance, tend to have higher achievement compared with their respective state averages than do schools elsewhere. There's a lot in this report; you will probably want your own copy. View it online at http://www.brookings.edu/GS/brown/bc_report/BC_Report_hp.htm or order one by contacting The Brown Center on Education Policy, The Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036; telephone 202-797-6406; fax 202-797-2973.
