California students may be turning the corner on more than a decade of lagging academic performance, according to research we’ve conducted on two decades of tests.
While we wish we had found the silver bullet, our analysis of scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — known as the nation’s report card — suggests that California’s improvement comes from a combination of policies: the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, the development of a new school accountability system, the initial training of teachers to implement the new standards and an increase in funding for the state’s neediest students.
Education reformers deny such progress, and the NAEP scores released late last year appear to support such skepticism. California’s scores dropped on almost every test. The state remains in the basement. Even after adjusting for the state’s higher poverty rate and greater share of English language learners, California was at the back of the pack.
Yet a closer look offers reason for cautious optimism. Our adjustments for student and school demographics, for instance, narrowed the gap between California students’ performance and higher-scoring states. For example, the difference in eighth-grade reading between California and top-ranked Massachusetts was 16 points by raw score in 2015 but was about eight points when adjusted for demographic differences.
Additionally, California students — starting from a low level — made fourth- and eighth-grade reading gains over a decade that were higher than average gains in most states. They also made reasonable gains in eighth grade mathematics in 2011-15, somewhat closing the gap with high-scoring states.
By looking at other states’ demographics, education policy and spending, we can gain deeper insights into why California was among the laggards in improving academic performance in the 1990s and 2000s. The state has a relatively high percentage of low-income students, who require more educational resources than higher-income students to succeed academically. But California has spent far less than other states for the past 40 years. Spending per student was 12 percent less compared with the nation as a whole in 1990, and by 2010 it was 15 percent less.
By contrast, states such as Texas and Massachusetts increased their per-student spending a lot more than the national average in the 1980s and 1990s, and these states saw big increases in their students’ NAEP scores.
The data clearly show that more than money is required to improve ailing school systems in places with high poverty. Look at Texas, which improved its educational systems by raising standards and holding schools accountable, while putting more resources behind the reforms. The state cranked up math curriculum and made sure teachers implemented it.
Interestingly, California — like Texas — implemented new math standards in the late 1990s. A major difference is that once the dot-com boom ended in 2000, California was unable to maintain the necessary support. California’s math score increases slowed way down.
In the past five years, Gov. Jerry Brown has put in place one of the most aggressive curriculum reforms in the country. He is establishing a system to enforce standards and has moved to increase resources going to low-income school districts. It’s a promising formula, but it will only work if we stick to it.
Martin Carnoy is an economist and professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education. Emma Garcia is an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
© Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.
