Settling For Gaining

Gains in math go unnoticed

In the coming debate over education policy in Ohio, the argument will probably be raised that we've been throwing tons of money at education and it doesn't work because the lousy test scores haven't budged in decades. The test scores are from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a measure of student achievement often praised as the ''gold standard'' of testing because the exams are more or less consistent over time and throughout the country, unlike state achievement tests. Critics of public education often cite NAEP statistics to paint the schools in a miserable light. But the NAEP data also tell a story of remarkable progress in mathematics, both in this state and across the country, that most Ohioans probably have never heard.