Mass. students lead US on tests

LYNN - President Bush and Governor Deval Patrick were among the bigwigs watching to see how elementary and middle school students would perform on national math and reading tests.

But Alfredo Perez, a fifth-grader at Aborn Elementary School in Lynn, had someone bigger to answer to if he didn't score well on the exam.

"My mom would kill me," the 10-year-old said.

Alfredo can relax for now. Massachusetts outscored every other state on three of the four National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, in results released yesterday that also show that some black and Hispanic students continue to score lower than their white peers.

"As long as there is an achievement gap, as long as we have uneven funding in public schools across the Commonwealth, as long as we don't have consistent excellence in every classroom and in every school, there is work yet to do," Patrick said, indicating during a press conference at the Aborn School that his education task force is studying possible solutions.

The state's fourth-graders topped the nation on the reading and math tests, administered in January, and the state's eighth-graders ranked first in math and tied for first with Montana, New Jersey, and Vermont in reading.

The results show improvement from 2005, when Massachusetts was first in reading for both grades and tied for first in math at both grades.

But problems persist for some minority-group students, despite some gains over 2005 scores.

On fourth-grade reading, 18 percent of Hispanics scored proficient or better, up from 11 percent. That's compared with 56 percent of white students at proficient, up from 51 percent, and 19 percent of black students at proficient, down 1 percentage point.

Hispanic fourth-graders improved to 23 percent at proficient on the math test compared with 14 percent in 2005, and black students improved to 26 percent from 18 percent, while white students improved to 65 percent, up from 57 percent.

Eighth-grade reading scores were virtually unchanged from 2005, the exception being 63 percent of Hispanics who scored at basic level, up from 56 percent.

On eighth-grade math, Hispanics improved to 19 percent at proficient, up from 15 percent, while white students improved to 58 percent at proficient, up from 49 percent.

The national scores will be scrutinized for signs of whether the No Child Left Behind Act is working. The goal of that five-year-old law is to get all students doing math and reading at their proper grade level by 2014.

The law has been criticized by some as mandating too much testing, echoing debate about whether Massachusetts puts too much emphasis on its own MCAS testing.