Dallas ISD Test Scores Improve as State, National Progress Suffers

Dallas ISD middle schoolers have made impressive gains in reading comprehension over the last few years, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores show. But a broader lens reveals that students across the United States are struggling to make up ground on pandemic-induced learning gaps. 

Every two years the NAEP samples reading and math test scores of fourth- and eighth-graders across the country. Students in both grades are, on average, scoring five points lower in reading than they were in 2019. Fourth-graders are scoring 3 points lower in math than they were in 2019, and eighth-graders’ math scores dropped 8 points in that time. 

According to Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, proficiency losses are especially worrying in the reading comprehension scores of lower-performing students. High-performing students are making up for pandemic losses, but Carr said their lower-performing peers are not.

“These 2024 results clearly show that students are not where they need to be – or where we want them to be,” Carr told The Dallas Morning News. “Our students, for the most part, continue to perform below pre-pandemic level, and our children’s reading skills continue to slide.”

Though education gaps in math have been attributed to the pandemic, national slides in student reading comprehension began years before. The 2024 survey showed more eighth-graders reading below the NAEP’s basic standard than ever before in the assessment’s history, Carr said. Students are considered below basic if they are missing foundational skills, such as being able to identify the meaning of a grade-level appropriate word.

Dallas Students Are Holding Steady, Mostly

Dallas ISD is one of around two dozen districts that participates in the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA), which tests an increased number of students to allow for district-specific takeaways. Fort Worth ISD is also enrolled in the program. 

In Dallas ISD, the number of eighth-graders deemed proficient in reading is 18%, an improvement from 2022’s 12%. According to the district, only the Chicago school district had higher reading gains in eighth-graders of the TUDA participants. Fifteen percent of eighth-graders are where they need to be in math, up from 12% in 2022. 

One out of five fourth-graders were deemed on-level in reading, a 2% improvement from 2022, and math resulted in a 5% improvement, for a 33% proficiency rate. Math scores for Dallas ISD fourth-graders put the district in the middle of the TUDA pack.

Although the results show room for improvement, Dallas was one of only four cities whose scores are not significantly different from 2019 pre-pandemic results. Dallas ISD outperformed Fort Worth ISD in all four categories.

“These results tell us that the supports we have implemented for the past three years both for teachers and students have helped us recover,” Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said in a statement. “However, they also tell us that we still have work ahead of us to get back to pre-pandemic levels and to narrow the gap with our peers. It is more important than ever to invest in the education of the children in our state and our district so we can continue the learning improvements.”