The achievement gap between Ohio's white and African American students has grown.At least, that's according to the results results of a series of national tests known as "the Nation's Report Card."The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, administers math and English tests to fourth and eighth graders every other year.Chad Aldis, the Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy for the Fordham Institute, said he’s a little disappointed in Ohio’s overall outcomes, especially because the knowledge gap in both math and English between the state’s white and African American fourth graders has slightly increased.
“That gap is already way too big,” Aldis said. “Our achievement gap is wider than the national average in both of those categories, which is something we need to continue working on addressing.”According to this year’s results, Ohio’s students rank slightly above the national average in all areas, and haven’t shown any significant improvement over their 2011 scores.Aldis thinks the recent adoption of a new set of learning expectations known as the Common Core will help challenge all of Ohio’s students and put them on a more even playing field with students from traditionally higher performing states.“We need to make sure we’re clearly doing as well as other states like Massachusetts, which I think we all know we can compete with,” Aldis said. “We just have to make sure we have the bar high enough.”Aldis said he hopes to see at least a modest increase in the next round of NAEP test scores.