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The data are based on the achievement tests in math and Reading Language Arts (RLA) administered annually by each state to all public-school students in grades 3–8 from 2008–09 through 2018–19. In these years, 3rd through 8th graders in U.S. public schools took roughly 500 million standardized math and RLA tests. Their scores—provided to us in aggregated form by the U.S. Department of Education—are the basis of the data reported here.

We combine information on the test scores in each school, geographic district, county, or state with information from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP; see https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/) to compare scores from state tests on a common national scale (see the Methods page).

We never see nor use individual test scores in this process. The raw data we receive includes only counts of students scoring at different test-score levels, not individual test scores. There is no individual or individually-identifiable information included in the raw or public data.