Miami-Dade County Public Schools students continue to turn in remarkable achievement, as revealed by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results released today. More than 6,300 students in 143 Miami-Dade County schools participated in this year’s grades 4 and 8 NAEP administration.
“As the gold standard of comparative student achievement, the NAEP–the Nation’s Report Card–reveals that the most compelling performance belongs uniquely to Miami-Dade,” said Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho. “In all tested areas, MDCPS bucked national and state trends outperforming large American cities.
“Following a number of school district achievements, including our 2012 Broad Prize win, the College Board’s Advanced Placement district of the year in 2013, and Magnet Schools of America’s District of Distinction award in 2013, this leading NAEP performance naturally bodes well for our students, for our teachers, and the economic positioning of our community,” Carvalho said.
“The Miami-Dade County public schools simply hit the new NAEP test results out of the park,” said Michael Casserly, Executive Director, Council of the Great City Schools. “The school district’s gains were among the fastest in the country of any major city and were across the board, even as state and national numbers were trending downward. A big tip of the hat for the progress the school system is making with its children.”
With a disproportionately high population of English Language Learners, M-DCPS demonstrated remarkable performance in Reading in comparison to the nation and other large urban districts.
Miami-Dade’s eighth-grade students ranked #1 in the nation in Reading; fourth graders ranked #2 in the nation. MDCPS was the only Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) district to show significant growth from 2013 to 2015 in Grade 8 Reading.
In MDCPS’s fourth year of participation in the national assessment, Miami-Dade Hispanic students continued to outpace their counterparts nationwide in both Reading and Mathematics and at both tested grade levels, with significantly higher mean scale scores than the national public school sample, large city schools, and Florida. Among the assessment’s 21 participating TUDA districts, Miami-Dade continued to shine.
Miami-Dade’s grade 4 Mathematics achievement also improved significantly from 2013 to 2015, surpassing public schools nationwide. Additionally, MDCPS’s Black fourth grade students scored significantly higher than their counterparts nationally in Mathematics.
Despite a significant nationwide decline in grade 8 Mathematics, Miami-Dade’s students maintained their levels of performance.
