In a situation that calls into question the United States’ ability to meet its ambitious college completion goals, a national “report card” released Tuesday shows that only about one-third of the country’s fourth- and eighth-graders were proficient in 2011 in reading and math.
The numbers were even more dire for African-American and Hispanic students. Among those groups, the proficiency rates ranged from 24 percent to as low as 13 percent.
Such are the findings of The Nation’s Report Card, which are based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, an ongoing project of the National Center for Education Statistics.
Though the report card doesn’t frame the findings based on what they mean for the future of higher education in the United States, the report card provides a snapshot of the current levels of proficiency for students who will represent the Class of 2015 and the Class of 2019.
Experts say the lackluster proficiency results among these groups show that serious obstacles lie in the path of the Obama administration’s “2020 goal” to restore the United States to its former prominence as the nation with the highest proportion of college degree holders in the world.
“You won’t reach a college completion goal with 80 percent of students not proficient,” said John Michael Lee Jr., policy director at the College Board’s Advocacy & Policy Center.
“You’re not going to reach your STEM goals if they’re not proficient in math. You’re not going to reach any of your national goals that way.”
