The Christian Science Monitor
October 1, 2009

"The news from a major new education study is encouraging: Student achievement is going up, and the gaps in test scores between subgroups - such as between African-Americans and whites - are closing across all grade levels and subjects.

The study, released Thursday by the Center on Education Policy (CEP), examines student performance in all 50 states since 2002, when the No Child Left Behind Act took effect. It paid particular attention to the achievement gaps for minority and low-income students.

The report focused on "trend lines" - for Latino students in fourth-grade reading, for instance, or for low-income students in high school math - and examined the gaps between lines. The gaps narrowed in 74 percent of all trend lines the researchers examined, most often because the gains made by lower-performing groups outpaced those made by the top-performing group."