The U.S. Department of Education ranks each states’ performance in a national report card every other year. StateImpact: Ohio’s Ida Lieszkovszky reports that in Ohio, not much has changed over the last few years.
The national education scores assess fourth and eighth graders on reading and math tests. Ohio saw improvement in the average math scores of eighth graders, but it stayed constant in fourth– grade math as well a fourth and eighth-grade reading proficiency.
Stan Heffner is Ohio’s superintendent of public instruction. He says that means Ohio has “been basically holding our own, running in place if you will, in our performance levels, but the question is, is that good enough? Twenty years ago, it might have been; today it is not and it won’t be in the future.”
Heffner says Ohio continues to outperform many other states, but falls short on international rankings. He hopes Ohio’s adoption of the common core standards; a new system of assessments and accountability focused on college readiness will help make students more competitive internationally.
Nationwide, the report cards showed that the achievement gap between white and minority students persists.
**StateImpact Ohio is an education reporting collaboration of NPR and Ohio public radio stations WCPN, WKSU and WOSU