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CHARLESTON, W. Va.–West Virginia’s scores on a national education bellwether have plummeted.
Test scores for reading and math were down for fourth and eighth graders across the nation in today’s release of the education assessment known as The Nation’s Report Card.
West Virginia’s results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress were well below the national average and amounted to the state’s lowest performance ever.
Gov. Jim Justice said he’s tried to make education the centerpiece of his administration. In a briefing, Justice said there’s more to school than test scores. The governor did say, though, that West Virginia needs to work on educational improvement.
“We’ve done a lot of stuff, and there’s a lot, a lot of really good stuff going on in our schools, a lot of going on in the schools in West Virginia that goes way, way beyond test scores,” Justice said.
“If you went to these fourth graders and you said to them ‘Who’s your teacher?’ and they would tell you and then you said to the fourth graders, ‘What do you think of your teacher?’ — I would say the overwhelming majority by far, these kids love their teachers.”
Justice said the same admiration for public schools and teachers would be true of most communities in West Virginia. “Most people love their schools and their communities, and it’s so meaningful,” Justice said.
“Now if the kids love their teachers and the community loves the school, we’ve got to have a bunch of good stuff going on there, don’t we? Let’s just be fair. Way, way, way beyond maybe bad test scores. But it doesn’t mean we turn our back on the test scores. We want to do better there. We absolutely have to be better there. Absolutely, our kids deserve that in every way. But I’m telling you there’s a lot of good stuff going on in our schools.”
Nationally, the test was administered to 446,700 students at 10,970 schools in all states at the beginning of the calendar year. It is scored on a scale of 0 to 500.
In mathematics, West Virginia public school fourth graders had an average score of 226. That was lower than the average score of 235 for public school students across the nation. That’s also the lowest score in more than 20 years for West Virginia fourth graders.
In reading, the other big area assessed, West Virginia fourth graders scored an average 205. The national average was 216. The score was the lowest ever recorded for West Virginia public school fourth graders.
West Virginia public school eighth graders scored 260 on average in math. That was lower than the national average of 272 and the lowest average for West Virginia eighth graders in more than 20 years.
The West Virginia eighth graders scored a 249 in reading. That was lower than the average national score of 259. And it was the lowest reading score ever recorded by West Virginia eighth graders.