The 2010 Brown Center Report on American Education

The annual report card on American Education directs readers to important trends in state, national and international assessment data. The critical analysis focuses on the following education issues: American achievement on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), how states are rewarded under the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education reform program and the disconnect between two national assessment programs that are both designed to authoritatively gauge student achievement.

Data from the PISA were released in December 2010. The U.S. performed near the international average in reading literacy and scientific literacy but below average in mathematical literacy. Part I of the report analyzes media reaction to this mediocre performance and debunks myths associated with international assessments.

Part II of the report considers how Race to the Top distributes grant money according to how states perform on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Out of the eight states to make superior gains on the NAEP, five were awarded with grants. A few states were awarded grants although they performed poorly on the NAEP. Part II discusses why this is the case.

Part III takes a closer look at the NAEP, which for years was the only assessment administered to representative samples of American Students. In June 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative resulted in an effort to write tests aligned to common, grade-by-grade standards for reading and mathematics. The report examines how well the NAEP matches up with the Common Core and urges policymakers and analysts to reconcile the two national assessments.

This edition of the Brown Center report, published in February 2011, is the tenth issue of the series, which began in 2000. The Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings is a nonprofit research center designed to examine the problems of the U.S. education system and identify promising solutions.
 

Read the report (pdf).