Florida Defeats the Skeptics: Test Scores Show Genuine Progress in the Sunshine State

Among the 50 states, Florida's gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) between 1992 and 2011 ranked second only to Maryland's. Florida's progress has been particularly impressive in the early grades. In 1998, Florida scored about one grade level below the national average on the 4th-grade NAEP reading test, but it was scoring above that average by 2003, and made further gains in subsequent years. Scores on Florida's own state examinations revealed an equally dramatic upward trend. Drawing on information on student performance available from the Florida Department of Education, the author was able to analyze test-score trends of students enrolled in the 3rd grade for the first time. He finds that the gains among initial 3rd graders were not as dramatic as those shown on the 4th-grade NAEP, thereby suggesting that the 4th-grade scores did create the appearance of steeper achievement growth than actually took place. Nonetheless, the gains among initial 3rd graders were very substantial, about 0.36 standard deviations between 1998 and 2009, and more than enough to justify Florida's claims that its gains have outpaced those in most other states. (Contains 2 figures.)