Gap Between Best and Worst Widens on U.S. Reading Test

esults of nationwide fourth-grade reading tests released yesterday show a widening gap between the very best students and the very worst despite a decadelong emphasis on lifting the achievement of all students.

From 1992 to 2000, the average reading scores for fourth graders on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation's report card, remained flat. The average score for top students increased while the average score for bottom students declined even more significantly.

The release of the scores led to a round of finger-pointing over the cause of the growing gap.

Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a nonprofit group that advocates for disadvantaged students, said the numbers spoke of "a frightening sort of educational Darwinism," adding, "It would appear that in a deeply misguided response to demands for higher achievement, schools are focusing their efforts and resources on those students most likely to succeed while neglecting the students who most need help."

Others said the problem was that teachers had failed to learn the best ways to teach reading.

Two-thirds of students tested fell below the level the federal government considers proficient, and 37 percent fell below even basic knowledge of reading, meaning they could read little beyond simple words and sentences and could not draw conclusions from what they read.

The gap between the very top and the very bottom levels widened in all racial and ethnic groups. The wide gap that has received the most attention in recent years — between black and white students — remained about the same.

Federal education officials called the scores disturbing and a sign that education colleges were not imparting the latest ways to teach reading. National reports show plenty of evidence about the best methods, they said, but in the field, educators are still warring between whole language and phonics, and the proven methods are not filtering down to those who need them most. The best method, several researchers and national panels have said, is neither pure whole language nor pure phonics but more of a hybrid, which would emphasize teaching children to decode the meaning of words.

"Although we talk about reform, not all the classrooms of America are seeing this reform," said Marilyn Whirry, a teacher in California and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the test.

This latest administration of the test, which is generally considered the most accurate measure of student progress, was ordered by the Clinton administration amid concern about a need to increase the number of students who can read by the end of third grade. That is when classroom priorities flip: students stop learning how to read and begin needing to read to learn other subjects.

The test was taken by a representative sample of 8,000 students in 40 states. It required students to read passages from books and magazines fourth graders might read. Students answered multiple choice questions and wrote answers that varied in length from a paragraph to a page.

The Department of Education reports the scores on a scale of 0 to 500 and by achievement levels: below basic, basic, proficient or advanced. The average score in 2000 was 217, the same as in 1992. The average scores of students in the bottom level dropped 7 points, to 163 from 170, and the scores in the top level rose to 264 from 261. In both cases the changes, while small, were statistically significant, said Gary W. Phillips, the acting commissioner for the department's National Center for Education Statistics.

The percentage of students scoring at the advanced level increased to 8 percent from 6 percent between 1992 and 2000, and the percentage above proficient rose to 32 percent from 29 percent. The percentage below basic, 37 percent, barely changed.

"These results just are not good enough," the secretary of education, Rod Paige, said. "Not in America."

Dr. Paige added, "While we celebrate those doing well, we can't turn a blind eye to those who are not."

Mr. Phillips noted differences between those who scored at the top and those at the bottom.

According to a survey accompanying the test, the low scorers were mostly male black or Hispanic students in urban neighborhoods who were classified as poor under federal guidelines. They were likely to have changed schools within the last two years. Thirty-four percent watched more than six hours of television every day, and 57 percent said they had "friends who make fun of people who try hard in school."

The best readers, by contrast, were mostly female and white. About half were in suburban schools, and 87 percent had attended the same school for at least two years. Just 6 percent watched more than six hours of television daily, and 7 percent had friends who made fun of those who work hard.

The percentage of special education students taking the test remained about the same, at 7 percent. And as in prior years, the 2,000 students in private or parochial school outpaced their public school peers, with the average score rising to 234 from 232.

President Bush has called literacy "the new civil right" and vowed to "leave no child behind," and Dr. Paige said the president's budget proposal to spend $5 billion on reading would raise scores.

But several education experts emphasized that the key is changing the way teachers learn to teach reading. They used the release of the scores to step up criticism of education colleges, which G. Reid Lyon, chief of the Child Development and Behavior branch at the National Institutes of Health, blamed for a tendency to "embrace unproven, ineffective reading programs," instead of programs scientifically shown to work.

Christopher T. Cross, president of the Council for Basic Education, said, "You can't fault the teachers; they've never been exposed to better ways to do this.

"We talk about an achievement gap but we also have a teaching gap, in getting the best methods of instruction down to the hands of those who are teaching at the very earliest grades," Mr. Cross said.

What is needed, he said, is massive investment in professional development to teach the new methods to current and prospective teachers.

Unfortunately, Mr. Cross said, "professional development is the major expense in this whole area of reform, and it is the one investment we're least willing to make."