Student achievement across the country remains below pre-pandemic levels in all grades and subjects, according to results released this winter for the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—often known as “The Nation’s Report Card”. The results should  concern all of us: for example, a third of U.S. 8th graders cannot read at even a basic level, according to the test.

The data that should energize every American with a sense of urgency around K12 education. Yet the Partnership team is galvanized by analysis of several subgroups’ results—even though our students are not among the national sample of students who took the NAEP. 

First, the data confirms that the Partnership’s efforts are aimed right where they are sorely needed. “Cleveland students are performing far worse than students across the nation, in Ohio, and in the majority of urban districts,” notes the Fordham Institute’s Jessica Pointer. Her breakdown of the city’s scores can be found here. 

Propelling academic achievement in Cleveland is challenging; Partnership educators will be the first to agree. But we also believe what we tell our students: We can do hard things. We know from our own classrooms’ results that progress is possible. 

Second, analysts like Chris Stewart are affirming who must be the focus of improvement efforts, and how those efforts must take shape. American student achievement is not declining across the board; rather, declines are accelerating among the bottom half of test takers, a group that is disproportionately composed of low-income students. 

“We are witnessing not just an educational decline but a sorting of America’s children into educational haves and have-nots,” Stewart explains. 

He goes on to assert that while the solutions must come from “engaging families, communities, and society” broadly, “schools are the biggest investment we make into teaching, learning, and outcomes.” And he asserts rigorous, long-term use of evidence-based instructional practices in schools—like those we are using and refining in Partnership classrooms—are key to reversing a trend that impacts our entire nation, not just students who struggle.  

Finally, the NAEP results affirm the unique power of Catholic schools—and caution us to be intentional about preserving and amplifying that power. A team from Boston College notes that yet again, Catholic school students outperformed their peers in public schools. 

The Partnership team’s own analysis confirms that the Catholic school advantage holds true as well for subgroups at the heart of our work, including Black and Hispanic students. Black students in Catholic schools outperform their peers in both public and public charter schools, in both reading and math. Hispanic students outperform their peers in all tests and both sectors by even wider margins. 

Yet within Catholic school students’ NAEP scores, the gap between Black and Hispanic students’ performance and their White peer’s widened more among Catholic school test takers than across the nation as a whole between 2022 and 2024. Thus, the Boston College NAEP analysis demonstrates the need to work proactively and intentionally to ensure that our schools’ outcomes are as equitable as the ideals of our faith.

The ability of Catholic schools to drive meaningful outcomes for children from historically disadvantaged communities matters beyond our own communities, for the school choice movement as a whole. Critics of school choice insist that there aren’t enough quality seats in low-income communities to deliver on the promise of school choice to those who need it the most. The Partnership team is committed to proving otherwise. Every day, as our team works together with teachers and principals to deepen learning in every classroom, we are determined to prove what can happen when Catholic schools in striving communities get the support they need—at a time when NAEP scores suggest it matters perhaps more than ever.