Here are the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress scores for Asians (orange) and whites (blue). I took a simple average of four scores: Reading and Math for both 4th and 8th grades. The overall sample size for the whole country is about 280,000, which is a lot, although I wouldn't put too much faith... Read More

For years, Audacious Epigone and myself have been pointing out that Texas public school kids do surprisingly well on the federal NAEP exam within each ethnic group. Now, the NYT finally figures that out, too: Surprise: Florida and Texas Excel in Math and Reading Scores OCT. 26, 2015 David Leonhardt @DLeonhardt When the Education Department... Read More

Long time readers know I've been interested in the question of school test scores in the two biggest states, California and Texas. In the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, Texas routinely beats California across all racial groups. But the NAEP is low stakes to students, which makes it easier for state officials to... Read More

Audacious Epigone has posted his table of white IQ estimates by state, using NAEP scores for 8th graders (public and private), ranging from 108.0 in Washington D.C. (which isn't a state) and 104.4 in Massachusetts and 103.5 in New Jersey to 97.7 in Oklahoma, 97.5 in Alabama and a hurting 95.1 in West Virginia. Thus,... Read More

The federal government's National Assessment of Educational Progress test results for 12th graders in readin' and 'rithmetic are now out for 2013. The feds have a nice website to display the numbers. I've been following these kind of test score stats for almost as long as I've been following baseball statistics, but I have to... Read More

The feds' National Assessment of Educational Progress has a table of 4th and 8th grade vocabulary and reading comprehension scores by state. Sample size issues are of concern for smaller states which tend to bounce around, but we can state with a high degree of statistical confidence that the future of the state of California,... Read More

Americans have devoted an enormous amount of effort over the centuries to devising useful baseball statistics. In recent years, Americans have talked a lot about devising useful educational statistics. For example, I've pointed out a million times over the last decade that it doesn't make much sense to judge teachers, schools, or colleges by their... Read More

Is this the best ranking yet available of how the states differ in how good a job their public schools are doing? Rank State Whites' relative NAEP improvement from 4th grade to 8th (St.Dev.) 1. Montana .93 2. North Dakota .84 3. Maryland .71 4. Oregon .67 5. Idaho .57 6. Dept. of Defense .55... Read More

Although demographics obviously are the driving force in measures of student achievement, it is possible for one state to do a better job than another relative to what it has to work with in terms of student potential. One interesting way to analyze the value added performance of a state's public schools is to compare... Read More

IQs by State, 1960 -- You probably remember the notorious "Democratic states have higher IQs" hoax from last May. Well, here, thanks to Prof. Henry Harpending of the U. of Utah anthropology dept., might be the closest thing to a national sample of IQ scores ever: the Project Talent database of 366,000 9th-12th grade students.... Read More

Graduate degrees by state -- Washington D.C.: first in grad degrees, first in liberal voting, but last in NAEP scores for 8th grade public school students. In this table, there is a correlation between voting for Gore in 2000 and graduate degrees. Liberals seem to prefer to live in more stratified, inegalitarian societies. The more... Read More

The future looks dumberer -- Looking at the NAEP scores for public school 8th graders by state (see below), it struck me that California is a going to be, on average, a much dumber state in the future than it is now. I always thought of it as a pretty smart state, what with Silicon... Read More

IQs by State, 1960 -- You probably remember the notorious "Democratic states have higher IQs" hoax from last May. Well, here, thanks to Prof. Henry Harpending of the U. of Utah anthropology dept., might be the closest thing to a national sample of IQ scores ever: the Project Talent database of 366,000 9th-12th grade students.... Read More