How they did it
• 166,000 fourth-graders and 159,000 eighth-graders took the reading test.
• 172,000 fourth-graders and 162,000 eighth-graders took the math test.
• Students were randomly assigned to a test.
• They had 50 minutes to finish the test.
• The fourth-grade math test contained 10 sections with 14 to 20 questions about number properties and operations, measurement, geometry, data analysis and probability and algebra. The eighth grade had 10 sections with 16 to 21 questions in the same categories.
• The fourth-grade reading test had 10 sections with passages and comprehension questions divided into literary works like short stories and information pieces like magazine articles. The eighth-grade test has 13 sections and also tests students on comprehension of documents bus schedules, directions and forms.
WASHINGTON California fourth- and eighth-graders scored well below the national average on reading and math tests administered by the federal Department of Education.
Nationally, results released Wednesday from the National Assessment of Education Progress, commonly called the "national report card," showed students improved in math. But scores were mixed when it came to reading.
About a quarter of the nation's fourth- and eighth-graders were proficient readers. But half of California fourth-graders tested at a below-basic reading level, the third worst ahead of only Mississippi and the District of Columbia. Eighth-graders did better in California in reading, but 40 percent still tested below basic levels.
Nationwide, fourth-graders had higher math scores, and about a quarter of the California fourth- and eighth-graders were proficient. But 43 percent of eighth-graders and 29 percent of fourth-graders in the state scored below basic, the sixth lowest scores in the nation.
The results will be widely used as a way to measure whether the country's emphasis on math and reading - fueled by President George W. Bush and Congress - is working. "What we've got here is a pretty satisfactory elementary performance - better math and reading," said Darvin Winick, chairman of the National Assessment Government Board, the bipartisan panel that oversees the test. "The eighth-grade performance is much more mixed.''
Local and state educators downplayed the significance of California's results. They said the tests don't take into account the uneven concentrations of English-learners in states, different teaching standards and small sample sizes.
"It's not a good measure of how students are learning in our classrooms," William Habermehl, the Orange County superintendent of schools, said Wednesday. "I would tell parents that if they want to know how well their schools are doing, they should compare them to other schools in the state."
Fewer than 200,000 students in the country were tested per grade in each subject in the exams administered last school year. Scores were not broken down beyond the state level. In Orange County, fewer than 100 students take the test each year. The names of participating schools are not released.
Other standardized tests administered nationally, like the SAT, ACT and California Achievement Test 6th Edition (CAT6), consistently show students in Orange County outscoring their peers in the state and nationally. State averages on those tests are also generally higher than they were for Wednesday's national report card scores.
The strongest results in the national tests came in math, particularly in fourth grade, where scores were up for every major racial and ethnic group since the last test in 2003. Math scores increased slightly in eighth grade, where black and Hispanic students narrowed their gap with whites.
"It shows there's an achievement gap in America that is closing," Bush said Wednesday about the results of the test - considered the best measure of how students in every state perform on core subjects.
But Jack O'Connell, California schools superintendent, said the report card tests are not aligned to the material that students in the state are required to learn.
And some states other than California tested a smaller percentage of their English-learners, the group that struggles the most with standardized testing, O'Connell said. California excluded 12 percent of its English-learner students from the reading test, while Texas' exclusion rate was 37.5 percent, and New York excluded 29 percent.
"There are valid reasons to question the fairness of state-to-state comparisons," O'Connell said.
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