National scores show Mass. students leading – with big asterisks

February 6, 2025

By Michael Jonas

Two things can both be true, and that was on full display when new results were released last week from national student achievement tests. 

"Massachusetts ranks #1 in national education assessment" trumpeted the headline on the press release from Gov. Maura Healey's office. The Boston Globe headline in its print edition told a decidedly different story: "National test shows little recovery in Mass. schools." 

WBUR captured the mixed message in its headline, "Mass. leads in reading and math scores, but still lags pre-pandemic levels." 

Massachusetts 4th and 8th grade students placed first in the nation in math and reading on the 2024 National Assessment of Education Progress, a test given to representative samples of students across the country that allows for direct comparison of student performance in different states. The state reclaimed the top spot on all four tests for the first time since 2017. 

But it did so against a dismal backdrop of overall achievement in US schools that is woefully below where it stood before the pandemic. What's more, Massachusetts has been on an even longer slide down, with achievement levels starting to fall well before the pandemic school disruption. 

While our relative ranking may still put us on top compared to other states, education analysts at the Urban Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on upward mobility and equity, say it also can be misleading to judge states entirely by their NAEP scores because they serve such different student populations. The share of lower-income students a state has, for example, or how much of its student population is made up of Black and Hispanic students, can all affect overall state scores, since these groups historically perform worse on achievement tests.

For a decade the Urban Institute has issued a report that adjusts state scores based on their demographic make-up. In the 2024 analysis, Massachusetts falls to fifth place in 4th grade math and fourth place in 4th grade reading after the demographic adjustments. We maintain our top spot in 8th grade reading even after demographic adjustment but fall to second place in 8th grade math. 

"Massachusetts does produce good outcomes with the kids they have," said Matt Chingos, vice president of the Work, Education, and Labor Division at the Urban Institute. But the state's demographics also "favor" higher NAEP scores, he said. According to the Urban Institute report, 42 percent of Massachusetts students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch compared with 57 percent of students in Florida, 60 percent in California, and 75 percent in Louisiana.

What people often want to know in comparing NAEP scores, said Chingos, is whether one state has better schools than another. The scores can't directly answer that, he said, but the demographically adjusted scores "get you closer" to answering that than just looking at the unadjusted raw scores.

"The more you're trying to inform judgements about what schools are contributing to student success, the more useful the demographically adjusted scores become," said Marty West, a member of the Massachusetts state board of education who also sits on the NAEP governing board. "Just as you wouldn't want to compare scores in Lexington and Lynn, and based solely on that data conclude Lexington schools are more effective, we shouldn't do the same thing among states whose demographics differ dramatically." 

That said, West emphasized that "what ultimately matters to kids is their unadjusted scores," since those measure whether they are on track to graduate with the skills needed for college or career success. 

While Black and Hispanic students in Massachusetts score higher than their peers in most other states, there are huge racial achievement gaps among Massachusetts students. On the 4th grade math test, for example, Black and Hispanic students both score 30 points lower than white students. Hispanic 4th graders are tied with those in Connecticut for the largest gap with white students of any state. 

Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler acknowledged those gaps at a recent press conference, where state leaders not only boasted about the state's No. 1 ranking on NAEP scores but emphasized the ongoing learning setbacks from the pandemic. "While today's results are not quite where we want them to be – we want to be No. 1 for all students –- there is recognition of the work to get there," Tutwiler said, touting the administration's focus on early literacy among other efforts. 

West pointed out that concerns about flagging student achievement Massachusetts long pre-date the pandemic. "Scores have not been moving in the right direction for more than a decade now and have fallen substantially from our prior peaks in 2011 in reading and in 2013 in math," he said.

West said the score that gave Massachusetts the top ranking in 8th math on the 2024 NAEP test would have landed us in 30th place in 2013. "That's how much scores have fallen in Massachusetts and overall," he said. 

Massachusetts has been the overall top performing state on NAEP since 2005. But math skills that include basic statistics help explain why focusing on that misses the bigger story. 

"The only reason we haven't lost our top ranking," said West, "is that scores have been slipping for much of that period nationwide."