Originally posted on Chalkbeat by Philissa Cramer

The first attempt by the “nation’s report card” to measure students’ ability to think creatively and use technology found wide racial achievement gaps — and evidence that schools aren’t effectively teaching important skills.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, has long been the only way to compare student test scores in math and reading across states. In 2014, amid growing calls for testing to go beyond basic academic skills, the group added a new exam to measure students’ “technology and engineering literacy,” or their ability to solve real-world problems. The test asked them to follow a series of steps to complete tasks such as designing a bike lane that increases safety and improving the environment for a class pet.

The results of that exam came out Tuesday and revealed that 43 percent of students met NAEP’s proficiency bar, meaning that they can diagnose simple technological problems and work toward solutions.

Within that total there were wide gaps: Students whose families are so poor that they qualify for free or reduced-price lunch scored 28 points lower, on average, than students from more affluent families. The gap between black and white students was even more pronounced, with 56 percent of white students scoring at or above “proficient” and just 18 percent of black students meeting that bar.

Those gaps are similar to ones that students tend to post on NAEP’s math and reading exams. The technology test was given at a time when many states were rolling out new learning standards that emphasize critical thinking and problem solving, and the results underscore the possibility that the shift to more rigorous standards could reinforce existing inequities.

A survey of the 21,500 students who took the test suggested that it could be challenging for schools to close the gaps. Nearly two thirds of students said they learn the most about how things work from their families; only 13 percent of students said their teachers were the top source of technology learning.

The National Association Governing Board, the federal office that administers NAEP, is using the results to call for more technology learning opportunities in and out of school.

“The scores clearly show that when students have opportunities to engage with technology and engineering, they become fluent in the skills that prepare them for living and working in the modern world. But access to these opportunities from place to place is patchy,” said Tonya Matthews, president and CEO of Detroit’s Michigan Science Center, in a statement from the board. (The Michigan Science Center is home to a charter school that draws students from across Detroit.)

“That’s a call for communities to create opportunities where needed, from schools to science centers to after-school programming,” she added.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.