The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have generated predictable headlines about “failing schools” and “crisis in education.” Reading scores fell two points for both 4th and 8th graders in 2024, continuing a steady decline that predates COVID-era disruptions, while 12th-graders posted historically low math and reading scores.
But painting American education with such a broad brush misses a critical truth: the United States doesn’t have one education system – it has 50 different state systems serving four distinct populations, each requiring different solutions. To declare the entire system a failure is not just misleading; it’s a statistical lie that obscures the nuanced reality of where we’re succeeding and where we’re struggling.
Four Americas, Four Different Educational Realities
American education serves four distinct populations, each with unique needs and challenges:
High-Achieving Students (Often from Affluent Areas): These students, primarily from middle and upper-middle-class families, are thriving and often outperforming international peers. They have access to resources, support systems, and enrichment opportunities that enable academic success.
Middle-Achieving Students: This represents the largest population gap – students who possess adequate cognitive ability but lack the executive functioning and study skills necessary to reach their potential. This is largely a function of gaps in what we call the Essential Eight™ skills.
Lower-Income Students with External Challenges: These students face significant barriers outside of education, including inadequate access to healthcare, nutrition, and stable housing. Their academic struggles often reflect broader socioeconomic challenges.
Immigrant Populations: Students from families where English is not the primary home language face unique linguistic and cultural adaptation challenges that require specialized support.
As Dr. Tony Di Giacomo observes: “The failure isn’t in our leadership or our teachers – it’s in our failure to recognize that solutions can be concurrent and not contradictory. We can celebrate and push high-achieving and lower-achieving students without cost, but we must address study skills, executive functioning, and content gaps in the routine of practice necessary outside of school.”
What the Research Really Shows: Success Stories and Evidence
Contrary to popular narratives, we do know how to improve educational outcomes. Harvard economist Roland Fryer‘s Apollo 20 project in Houston showed it was possible to erase the racial achievement gap in less than two years, by applying simple reform principles to the worst-performing schools.
Fryer’s research with Will Dobbie examined 39 charter schools and found that an index of five policies – frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations – explains approximately 45 percent of the variation in school effectiveness. Notably, traditionally collected input measures – class size, per-pupil expenditure, teacher certification, and teacher training – were not correlated with school effectiveness.
But here’s the crucial insight: these intensive interventions worked because they addressed specific deficits for specific populations. They weren’t one-size-fits-all solutions.
Success Story: The Louisiana Reading Renaissance
Louisiana saw 4th grade reading scores that were higher than pre-pandemic averages, representing one of the few bright spots in recent NAEP data. Louisiana has “heavily” focused on the science of reading for several years, demonstrating that targeted, evidence-based approaches can work when implemented consistently across a state system.
This success story illustrates that improvement is possible – but it requires sustained focus on specific, research-backed interventions rather than broad policy mandates.
The Spending Paradox: More Complex Than Headlines Suggest
Yes, education spending has increased dramatically while test scores remained flat. The total cost to educate a student from kindergarten through high school graduation has nearly tripled from $56,903 in 1972 to $164,426 in 2010 (adjusted for inflation). While federal policymakers increased the Department of Education’s budget from $38 billion in 2000 to roughly $70 billion today, the math and reading performance of American high school students remained completely flat.
But this narrative oversimplifies the relationship between spending and outcomes. As Fryer’s research demonstrates, it’s not about how much we spend – it’s about how we spend it and on which specific interventions for which specific populations.
The Missing Piece: Executive Function and Study Skills
The most significant gap affecting the middle-achieving population – the largest group of underperforming students – lies in what we’ve identified as the Essential Eight™: the executive functioning and study skills that enable effective learning.
Research confirms that executive functions (EFs) display greater predictive power at early ages and have a robust, specific capacity for predicting future academic performance. EFs in the spring of preschool predicted achievement 3 years later in math and reading, and improvement of academic skills was mediated almost entirely via improvement of EFs (Raver et al., 2011).
EF appears to incorporate cognitive processes fundamental to several aspects of academic achievement, yet our education system fails to systematically develop these skills.
The Part-Time Learning Problem
Dr. Di Giacomo explains the core issue: “Moreover, without teaching executive functioning and study skills, and without after-school practice, school becomes only a part-time endeavor, with the lucky few practicing enough to master the content, pulling ahead of their unwitting peers. Schooling is not to be exclusively outsourced to the school, and homework does take work, effort, to make it successful.”
This insight reveals why NAEP scores remain flat despite massive investments. More 8th graders than ever before are scoring below NAEP “basic,” the lowest benchmark on the test, not because schools are failing universally, but because we’re trying to play catch-up during the school day instead of building the foundational skills that enable learning outside of school.
“We feel this is the very reason we see flat NAEP scores,” Dr. Di Giacomo continues, “insufficient practice, extensive distraction, overstimulated and stressed students, with expectations that do not match effort and routine.”
The Novella Prep Solution: The Essential Eight™
At Novella Prep, we’ve identified the Essential Eight™ skills that research shows are crucial for academic success:
- Time Management – Estimating, allocating, and monitoring time effectively
- Organization Systems – Creating and maintaining systems for materials and information
- Goal Setting and Planning – Breaking complex tasks into manageable steps
- Self-Monitoring and Reflection – Developing metacognitive awareness
- Attention Regulation – Building sustained focus and resisting distraction
- Working Memory Strategies – Techniques for holding and manipulating information
- Cognitive Flexibility – Adapting strategies when initial approaches don’t work
- Persistence and Grit – Developing resilience through academic challenges
Our success stories demonstrate the power of this approach:
Sarah, 10th Grade: Came to us with a 2.1 GPA despite being in honors classes. After six months of Essential Eight™ training, she improved to a 3.4 GPA and reported feeling “in control of my learning for the first time.”
Marcus, 8th Grade: Struggled with homework completion and organization. Through systematic executive function training, he went from completing 40% of assignments to 95% within one semester, with corresponding improvements in all subject areas.
Elena, 6th Grade: An ESL student who was bright but couldn’t demonstrate her knowledge effectively. Essential Eight™ skills helped her develop study strategies that worked with her bilingual learning style, leading to honor roll achievement.
Moving Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Solutions
The evidence is clear: no single policy can solve the complex challenges facing American education. As Dr. Di Giacomo emphasizes: “This is not a failure of leadership – it’s a failure of nuance and realizing solutions can be concurrent and not contradictory.”
Different populations need different interventions:
- High-achieving students need acceleration and enrichment opportunities
- Middle-achieving students need systematic executive function and study skills training
- Lower-income students need comprehensive support addressing health, nutrition, and social services
- Immigrant populations need specialized language support and culturally responsive teaching
The key insight is that these solutions aren’t mutually exclusive. We can and must pursue multiple strategies simultaneously.
A Call for Nuanced Reform
Dr. Di Giacomo’s vision for education reform recognizes this complexity: “We need to stop looking for new trendy policies and big swings in values, and start implementing systematic, iterative solutions. For the majority of underperforming students, the gap isn’t in cognitive ability – it’s in the Essential Eight™ skills that enable them to learn effectively outside the classroom.”
The path forward requires:
- Recognizing success where it exists and scaling those models appropriately
- Targeting interventions to specific populations rather than applying broad mandates
- Systematically teaching executive function and study skills as core curriculum
- Supporting teachers with specific strategies for different student populations
- Measuring what matters including student development in learning skills, not just content knowledge
Conclusion: From Crisis Narrative to Strategic Solutions
The NAEP scores don’t tell a story of universal failure – they tell a story of complex systems serving diverse populations with varying degrees of success. Rather than declaring a crisis, we should be asking more nuanced questions: Which interventions work for which students? How can we scale successful models? What specific skills do struggling students need to develop?
The answer for the largest group of underperforming students – those in the middle-achieving category – is clear: they need the Essential Eight™ skills that enable effective learning. This isn’t about more money or new policies; it’s about systematic, evidence-based skill development that transforms students from passive recipients of instruction into active, strategic learners.
As Dr. Di Giacomo concludes: When we stop trying to fix everything at once and start addressing the specific skill gaps that prevent learning, we see transformation. The students were always capable – they just needed the tools.
Dr. Tony Di Giacomo is the founder of Novella Prep, where the Essential Eight™ framework helps students develop the executive functioning and study skills necessary for academic success. The Essential Eight™ is a trademark of NovellaPrep.
References
- Ahmed, S. F., Tang, S., Waters, N. E., & Davis-Kean, P. (2019). Executive function and academic achievement: longitudinal relations from early childhood to adolescence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111, 446–458.
- Best, J. R., Miller, P. H., & Naglieri, J. A. (2011). Relations between executive function and academic achievement from ages 5 to 17. Child Development, 82(4), 1331-1349.
- Dobbie, W., & Fryer, R. G. (2013). Getting beneath the veil of effective schools: Evidence from New York City. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5(4), 28-60.
- Diamond, A., & Ling, D. S. (2020). Review of the evidence on, and fundamental questions about, efforts to improve executive functions, including working memory. Cognitive and Working Memory Training, 143-431.
- Raver, C. C., Jones, S. M., Li‐Grining, C., Zhai, F., Bub, K., & Pressler, E. (2011). CSRP’s impact on low‐income preschoolers’ preacademic skills: self‐regulation as a mediating mechanism. Child Development, 82(1), 362-378.