Math Scores Up for 4th and 8th Graders

EMBARGOED UNTIL TUESDAY, 10:00 AM EDT; U.S. maps show change in reading and math score performance for fourth and eight graders, 2005 to 2007, by state; two sizes; 2c x 3 5/8 inches; 96.3 mm x 92.1 mm; 2c x 5 5/8 inches; 96.3 mm x 142.9 mm (Damiko Morris - AP)

"In many cases, the cumulative gain has been extraordinary," said Kathi King, a math teacher in Oakland, Maine who serves on the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the tests. "It's pretty clear that we must be doing something right."

Jim Rubillo, executive director of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, says math teachers are getting more on-the-job training than they used to.

"Teachers know more about mathematics," he said. "They know more about how students learn mathematics."

There also is a widespread belief that it's easier for teachers to affect math scores than reading scores, because math is almost entirely a school-based subject while children get varying degrees of exposure to reading at home.

In reading, fourth-grade scores were higher than they were two years ago. But eighth-grade reading scores only moved up a little.

_A third of fourth-graders were proficient or better at reading _ up 2 percentage points from 2005. Kids working at that level could identify a literary character's problem and describe how it was solved.

_Sixty-seven percent of fourth-graders could do at least basic-level work, up from 64 percent last time.

_There was no increase in eighth-graders working at the proficient or advanced levels. About a third could do that level of work, meaning they could identify the literary genre of a story, for example.

_Seventy-four percent of eighth-graders could read at a basic level, up 1 percentage point from 2005.

Darvin Winick, chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, said it was discouraging that there wasn't more progress in eighth-grade reading. He said boosting the reading skills of older children "should be the next national imperative."

David Gordon, a member of the testing board and the school superintendent in Sacramento, Calif., said educators and policymakers must focus on bringing up the scores of minority students. "We owe it to those kids to make them competitive," he said.

One goal of No Child Left Behind is to shrink the gap in math and reading scores between minority and white students.