Benchmarks

NAEP Is Our Main Benchmark

Reading proficiency is the central skill required for success in school. For that reason, it is the discipline on which the system rises or falls.

From the creation of public schools through the start of the 19th century, reading was taught phonetically.  Then, the methods changed. (See "Reading Wars.") There were a number of "turning point" events in the last century that prompted concerns about the nation's education system: the 1957 Sputnik Crisis, the 1983 National Commission for Excellence in Education report, A Nation at Risk. , and the 2000 National Reading Panel report.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. Abraham Lincoln, 1838

As a result of the 1983 NCEE report, Congress embraced the NAEP reading assessment to measure our students' reading proficiency. The National Assessment for Educational Progress is the largest continuing, nationally representative assessment of what American students have learned. It's often referred to as The Nation's Report Card. The tests began in 1992 and are scheduled, generally, on a two-year rotating schedule for students in the fourth and eighth grades. However, twelfth graders are only tested every four years. Each test is specific to a particular subject area.  Because our focus is reading, we are focused on the reading assessment.

What Is the Reading Assessment?

The reading assessment treats reading as a dynamic cognitive process. It evaluates three cognitive targets:

• locate and recall,
• integrate and interpret, and
• critique and evaluate.

The reading passages are primarily literary or information. Literary passages include fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction. Information passages focus on exposition, argument/persuasion, and procedures.

While the tests for all three grade levels have major similarities, the reading for fourth graders leans toward more literary writing. The assessment for twelfth graders features more informational passages.

How Does It Measure Reading Proficiency?

The scoring range for the assessment is 0 to 500. Every test taker's score will rank within one of four predetermined reading proficiency levels. These levels are:

• Below Basic
• NAEP Basic
• NAEP Proficient
• NAEP Advanced

Each level encompasses a specific list of skills and reading behavior that are measured by the assessment. Those standards vary by proficiency level and also by grade. Each list is long and quite detailed. You can find them here for grades 4, 8, and 12.

It's a sad fact that, since the first NAEP reading assessment in 1992, the scores of our students have basically been a flat line. Despite all the tinkering and tweaking and all the added billions of dollars, there has been no change. Still, roughly two-thirds of our students are not proficient readers. In fact, more than 20 percent are not even basic readers.

Our nation is at risk. The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament. A Nation at Risk, 1983

Why Should We Care about Reading Proficiency?

There are three big reasons to care about reading proficiency.

First, reading skill is an enormous factor in every student's academic success. The "great reset" in reading happens in fourth grade. It's a shift from learning to read to reading to learn. One study found that students in grades one through five spend as much as 6.26 hours reading each week. By middle school and high school, students will spend 30 to 40 percent of their time in school reading and 50 to 70 percent of their study time after school. Because secondary school depends heavily on reading, a nonproficient reader will struggle to keep up, falling further behind each year.

However, there's a bigger reason to focus on achieving reading proficiency in school: reading actually amplifies cognitive develop because of the way it impacts the brain. Reading requires rapid communication between the visual cortex (seeing the words), the auditory cortex (hearing the sounds), and the frontal lobe (understanding meaning). The book by Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist, lays out the neural basis of reading. The title is Reading in the Brain.

Finally, the best reason to care about reading proficiency is this: since the first assessments in 1992, we have made virtually no progress or improvement. See for yourself on this page.

Children who are failing at reading at the end of the first grade are extremely likely to be failing at reading at the end of fourth grade. And failure in reading strongly predicts failure in all other academic subjects. So a child who is not breaking the code well, who has not figured it out, who is falling behind, is a child whose academic life course is at risk and because of that whose life is at risk because the economic opportunities of life. So reading again, is absolutely fundamental. Grover (Russ) Whitehurst, Director, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.  

The Renaissance of Reading in the Mississippi Miracle

Around 2013, the State of Mississippi instituted a new reading curriculum of explicit phonics instruction. On January 29, 2025, Governor Tate Reeves put out a press release citing the results of the 2024 NAEP reading and math assessments for Mississippi. The results speak for themselves. I include them here:

• Highest-ever rate of students scoring proficient or advanced in all four tests: 4th and 8th grade reading and math
• No. 1 in the nation for achieving highest score increases in 4th grade reading and math since 2013
• No. 9 in the nation for overall 4th grade reading scores and No. 16 for 4th grade math scores (up from No. 49 and No. 50 in 2013)
• African American 4th graders rank No. 3 among their peers nationally for reading and math scores
• Hispanic 4th graders rank No. 1 among their peers nationally for reading scores and No. 2 for math scores
• Economically disadvantaged 4th graders rank No. 1 in the nation among their peers in reading and No. 2 for math.
• 8th grade scores hold steady since 2013 as scores nationally dropped
• Mississippi is one of only 13 states with gains in 4th grade math, which is the only subject and grade nationally that showed statistically significant improvements since 2022.

Here's what we don't know: did Mississippi change the way they taught math, or did the improvement in math come from better reading?

NAEP makes data readily available whenever an assessment cycle is completed. Below are just some of the data sources that can be found on their site. In many cases, data can be customized in the way it is made available, and many pages offer the use the ability to export to a number of formats.

State Profiles

• Choose Grade
• Choose Reading
• Choose:
  • Average score
  • At or Above Basic
  • At or Above Proficient
• Choose Year--Data may not be available for all years

District Profiles

• • Choose Grade
  • Choose Reading
  • Choose:
    • Average score
    • At or Above Basic
    • At or Above Proficient
  • Choose Year--Data may not be available for all years
  • Choose Compare to:
    • Large City
    • National Public

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment)

• Publisher: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
• Purpose: International comparison of 15-year-old students’ reading, math, and science literacy.
• Results Published: Country-level reports, including U.S. performance vs. other nations.
• Home Page
• PISA Scores by Country in Math, Science, and Reading
• Public Education Rank by Country

PIRLS & LaNA (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study)

• Publisher: IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement).
• Purpose: PIRLS measures 4th-grade reading achievement every 5 years.
• Results Published: By country, with U.S. data included.
• Home Page
• PIRLS: Cycles through 2026

PIAAC (Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies)

• Publisher: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
• Also Known As: Survey of Adult Skills
• Purpose: Measures adult literacy, cognitive and workplace skills
• Results Published: Nationally by demographic group.
• Home Page
• Study Results: 2023

Statewide Tests

• Vary by state
• For Information: Contact U.S. Department of Education