You Need to Know That Texas’ Latest Scores Still Low in Math and Reading

If you are a Texan and you are wondering how the kids are doing in school these days, according to the Texas Tribune, for some students, it couldn't get much worse. Overall, the test scores in Texas have dropped down since 2022, but black students and English learners did perform better in Texas than other states in the country.

Every two years the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, test students in the country in fourth and eighth grade. Almost 240,000 students across the US took the exam and about 12,000 of those students were from Texas.

Poorer students scored lower than more affluent test takers in reading and math, and white kids also scored hirer than their Black and Hispanic counterparts.

Texas had higher math scores than the rest of the nation until 2017. Both the country and the state have steadily declined in the subject since that time. Unfortunately, Texas has seen a more rapid decline in the past 8 years than the rest of the country. In 2011, Texas had a NAEP math score that was significantly higher than the rest of the country, but we have dropped from a 290 to 269 math score in Texas over the last 14 years.

1998 was the last time that Texas scored higher than the rest of the nation when it comes to the reading tests. 2019 showed the biggest gap in reading tests with a six-point difference, but last year we showed a four-point trail on the country average reading scores.

Texas has certainly seen better days when it comes to student test scores, but the good news is that improvement is always possible. If we can focus our efforts on education there’s still hope for a brighter academic future.