Lisa Snell on Stagnating High School Test Scores

Since 1970,
K-12 education spending in the United States has tripled in
inflation-adjusted dollars, writes Lisa Snell, director of
education policy at the Reason Foundation. However, the
just-released results from the National Assessment of Educational
Progress, otherwise known as the “Nation’s Report Card” shows no
score improvements for high school seniors in reading and math
since 2009 and little progress over the last decade. These results
offer depressing and ongoing evidence of stagnation, confirming
findings from the NAEP long-term trend analysis of high school
seniors scores in reading, math, and science, which has been
showing flat lines since the early 1970s.

But while we’ve seen little change in school performance for our
pubic high school seniors, despite soaring education costs in
traditional public schools, writes Snell, school choice and
competition show promise to improve outcomes for students by
allowing families to find the schools and education services that
best match their needs.

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