Robert Perkins, Brian Kleiner, Stephen Roey, and Janis Brown, Westat and National Center for Education Statistics
April 2004
This whopper from the National Center for Education Statistics recounts changes in high-school course-taking patterns during the 1990s, based on transcript studies conducted in connection with NAEP. (You'll be able to make earlier comparisons - back to 1982 - with the help of a forthcoming "tabulations report" from NCES.) Sounds dry, yes, but it's full of important and somewhat encouraging data regarding the classes that high school students take before graduating, significant increases in AP and IB course-taking during that decade, intersections between course-taking and grades, and NAEP scores related to course-taking. To whet your appetite, here are three findings:
- The average number of course credits earned in "core" academic subjects by U.S. high-school graduates rose from 13.7 to 15 during the 1990's.
- Those who took AP and/or IB math/science courses also earned better grades (average of 3.6) than those who didn't (2.9), though everybody's GPA rose (from an average of 2.7 to 2.9).
- Private school graduates do better on NAEP than their public-school peers, but not hugely better. In 2000, the former earned an average NAEP "scale score" in math of 318 (of possible 500) while the latter averaged 300.
There are tons more where these came from. Check it out at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2004455.
