D.C. students are worst readers

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The District's schoolchildren rank as the worst readers in the country and only slightly better in some grades than non-English-speaking children in the territories of Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa, according to a new national report.

The verdict of "The Nation's Report Card: Reading 2000," issued yesterday by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), is that the nation's fourth- and eighth-graders generally showed slight improvement in reading ability over the past several years. But the nation's high school seniors entering the work force or headed to college were worse readers than 12th-graders in 1998.

Meanwhile, the District's schoolchildren in all grades are slipping backward as other jurisdictions improve, despite per-pupil spending and teacher salaries that are among the highest in the country.

Neither Superintendent Paul Vance nor any other D.C. school official returned calls for comment on the report, which shows that more than two-thirds of the city's fourth-graders and more than half of its eighth-graders had "below basic" reading ability last year, according to NAEP tests.

"Below basic" means the children could not demonstrate an understanding of what they read.

Only 10 percent of D.C. fourth- and eighth-graders last year were "at or above proficient" reading ability -- the same percentage of fourth-graders as 10 years ago, but 2 percentage points fewer eighth-graders than in 1992.

To be proficient, students must "demonstrate an overall understanding of text, providing inferential as well as literal information," and scoring 238 on the fourth-grade test and 281 on the eighth-grade test. The average scores for D.C. students were 191 for fourth grade and 240 for eighth grade.

When compared with average reading scores of city students throughout the country, D.C. fourth-graders scored 21 points below average and eighth-graders 18 points below average.

The District's percentage of "below basic" readers also was 20 percentage points higher than the national average for city students, even though the District's $9,650 per-pupil cost and average teacher salary of $48,651 topped all but a few states, according to the report.