Two recently released reports, The Nation’s Report Card: 12th-Grade Reading and Mathematics 2005, and, The Nation’s Report Card: America’s High School Graduates, showed that high school graduates have been earning better grades in tougher courses, but that hasn’t manifested itself as better achievement scores on the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

The average 12th-grade reading score was the worst since 1992, and less than a quarter of 12th graders were at or above proficient levels in mathematics. 

The 2005 NAEP reading and math assessments were administered by the National Center for Education Statistics to a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 high school seniors in 900 schools. Transcripts were collected about  26,000 high-school graduates from nearly 640 public schools and 80 private schools. More details are available at The Nation's Report Card.