Intuitively, I can understand that English Second Language students would struggle in classes other than English, but are the demographics really shifting enough to explain the drop in attainment shown in the article?

The best demographic data I can find is here: https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/103-child-population...

The best data I can find on language spoken at home is here: https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/81-children-who-spea...

The above shows the share of "Non-Hispanic White alone" children (who I'll assume speak English as a first language) going from 52% to 48% from 2015-2024, and the percentage of "Children who speak a language other than English at home" staying flat at 22% from 2013-2023. From 2015-2024, math attainment goes from 62% to 55%.

At a glance, it would seem that the shift in math attainment cannot be explained by demographics/language alone.

The NAEP site has performance by student group sections. It includes breakdowns for Hispanic and English/non-English learners and includes a section on demographic changes (ctrl+f Group Population Percentages).

Reading: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/reading/2024/g12/p...

Math: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/mathematics/2024/g...

Hispanic population has shifted (+3-4%/report) and English learners have shifted (1-3%/report). [Note that reports have variable number (~2-5) of years between them]

English learner scores went up (or stayed the same) and non-English learner scores went down.

The big caveat of course that the English learner average score is still much lower than the non-English learner so if that population increased enough it still drags down the average. (Click the English learners to see their scores or see the National Student Group Score Distributions section for graphs that make this apparent).

But it has to be more complicated than "the English-learning Hispanic population increased" because if you look within racial groups: all groups except Asian are down within their own group.

Or, for example, girls' scores are down more than boys' scores even though girls' scores are still better than boys' on average in Reading (but worse in Math).

I think it's probably multiple factors all adding together. For example, % of public charters has increased but public charter schools have worse scores than public non-charter. % of economically disadvantaged has increased and economically disadvantaged students have worse scores than those not. % of students with disabilities has increased and students with disabilities have worse scores than those without.

The weirdest thing to me is how the population statistics are different between reading and math. From 2019->2024 the reported Hispanic 12th Grade population shifted 3% for Reading but only 1% for Math?