By Nuria Martinez-Keel, Oklahoma Voice
OKLAHOMA CITY — Nationwide testing shows Oklahoma continued to lag behind the national average in reading and math scores in 2024, and the state’s academic performance had little improvement since 2022.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as Nation’s Report Card, tests fourth and eighth graders in reading and math in each state every two years. Results from across the country, including Oklahoma, in 2024 remained below pre-pandemic performance.
Only 23% of fourth graders and 20% of eighth graders in Oklahoma performed at a proficient level in reading on the NAEP tests, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the assessments.
Nationally, fourth-grade reading scores declined while Oklahoma held steady, though the state still fell below the national average of 30% scoring proficiently.
Eighth-grade scores also came short of the 29% national average. The state and national averages for eighth grade reading showed no significant change compared to 2022 results.
Oklahoma, like most states, also lacked any significant difference in its math scores compared to two years ago, NAEP scores show. Thirty-one percent of Oklahoma fourth graders and 17% of eighth graders made a proficient score on the NAEP math assessments.
The national average rose to 39% proficiency in fourth-grade math, and national eighth-grade results showed little change at 27%.
Academic performance and chronic absenteeism rates across the United States remain worse than NAEP results from 2019, the last time students took the assessments before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Overall, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance,” NCES Commissioner Peggy G. Carr said. “Where there are signs of recovery, they are mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performing students. Lower-performing students are struggling, especially in reading.”
NAEP assessments began in 1992, and every state is federally required to participate. The Nation’s Report Card is considered the only reliable tool for state-by-state comparisons in K-12 academic achievement. That’s because, outside of NAEP, each state has its own unique testing methods and definition of proficiency that are difficult to compare to one another.
The Nation’s Report Card gives a distinctly different look at Oklahoma’s academic performance than the state’s own self-assessment.
State-administered testing determined 43% of Oklahoma students scored at a proficient or advanced level in reading and 32% were proficient or advanced in math for the 2023-24 school year, according to data from the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
In 2024, the state reset its expectations for student performance on yearly reading and math exams. Documents the state Department of Education released show students could score lower and still be considered proficient.
This resulted in dramatically higher proficiency rates, particularly in English language arts. Without context, it gave an impression of significant improvements in school performance.
The scoring change also reversed the heightened expectations that Oklahoma set in 2017 to align its standards more closely with NAEP’s.
Internal documents the Education Department did not release to the public, which Oklahoma Voice obtained, revealed that statewide English and math results would have been similar to the previous year’s scores if proficiency expectations had not been adjusted.
The state’s 2024 NAEP results also reflect stagnant improvement.
The state Education Department released annual reading and math test results over the summer without explaining that a statistically significant change had taken place in Oklahoma’s scoring system.
The agency still has not formally announced the scoring change and in recent months has declined to comment on it, even when releasing Oklahoma State Report Cards grading each public school’s academic performance.
NAEP tests, on the other hand, have remained consistent while states have changed their testing methods and expectations. Its reading and math assessment frameworks last changed in 2009.
