Mississippi fourth-graders are the tops in the country at math and reading, surpassing their peers in much wealthier New Jersey and Connecticut, according to an analysis of America’s foremost test of student learning. A raft of other, mostly unheralded states command the peaks of academic achievement, including Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Georgia. Those findings emerge out of adjusting the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. Amid an otherwise-disastrous release of fourth- and eighth-grade scores last month, experts hailed the emergence of a new hierarchy of educational excellence that largely runs through the South.

There’s a catch, however: That adjusted National Assessment of Educational Progress is visible only after researchers account for the wide variety of student populations in each state. The startling adjustments to the 2024 NAEP were produced by the left-leaning Urban Institute, which has long applied statistical controls to scores in an attempt to develop a more precise understanding of how well schools are teaching children.

At the heart of the effort is an acknowledgment that student demographics are not evenly sorted across state borders. Black students live in disproportionate numbers across the Deep South, while English language learners are much more likely to be found near the Mexican border. Perhaps most prominently, rates of child poverty are much worse below the Mason-Dixon line than above. Higher or lower concentrations of these student groups, which have all historically posted lower NAEP scores, can heavily sway states’ performance in ways that may not accurately represent the quality of their schools and teachers, said Matthew Chingos, Urban’s vice president for education.

Adjusting for demographic traits produces “more of an apples-to-apples comparison” between different parts of the country, he added.

“If you want to go to a random state, ask a fourth-grader a math question, and have the highest chance of them getting it right, you’ll probably be fine going to the place with the most white, high-income kids,” Chingos said. “But if you want to randomly place a kid in the state where he’ll learn the most, then this list is a better approximation of that.”

Read the full article about the National Assessment of Educational Progress by Kevin Mahnken at The 74.