June 01, 2012
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A newly released report that describes student performance on a science assessment from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is available in ERIC.
The Nation's Report Card: Science 2011 presents results of the NAEP U.S. science assessment in 2011. A representative sample of 122,000 eighth-graders participated in the assessment, designed to measure students' knowledge and abilities in the areas of physical science, life science, and Earth and space sciences. Highlights of the findings including the following:
- The average eighth-grade science score increased from 150 in 2009 to 152 in 2011.
- The percentages of students performing at or above the Basic and Proficient levels were higher in 2011 than in 2009. Sixty-five percent of students performed at or above Basic, up from 63 percent in 2009. Thirty-two percent scored at or above Proficient, up 2 points as well. There was no significant change in the percentage of students in the Advanced range, which remains at 2 percent.
- Score gaps between White and Black students and between White and Hispanic students narrowed from 2009 to 2011.
- Male students scored 5 points higher on average than female students in 2011, which was not significantly different from the 4-point gap in 2009.
- Private school students scored 12 points higher on average than public school students in 2011, which was not significantly different from the 15-point score gap in 2009.
NAEP is administered and analyzed by the National Center for Education Statistics at the Institute of Education Sciences. Additional information is available from http://nationsreportcard.gov/science_2011/.
