KQED Public Radio
- 3:30am Morning Edition The Evolution of a Musical Revolutionary
- 5:00am Morning Edition
Weather/Traffic
News & Public Affairs Programs on KQED
KQED e-Newsletters
Get regular updates on great programs and events
More from KQED
Education
CA Students Score Near Bottom on NEAP Language Arts Tests
The latest scores from the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NEAP) show that the state’s 4th and 8th graders rank in the bottom five states nationwide in reading and vocabulary.
That means California students got the right answer on the exam only half of the time.
UC Berkeley Education Professor David Pearson said the state has done poorly on this assessment for more than a decade.
"It's an independent arbiter and it assesses literacy in its most challenging form," Pearson said, "and we don't do well on it."
Pearson attributes California's scores partly to the state's increasing population of students who struggle with English.
California joins Hawaii, Mississippi, Louisiana and the District of Columbia at the bottom of the list.
