The Geography Report Card NAEP is releasing today has some encouraging news. Since the assessment was first given in 1994, achievement has gone up in both the fourth and eighth grades, and all of the significant gains have been made by the lower-performing groups of students.

As a result, the proportion of students reaching the Basic achievement level, set by the Governing Board in these two grades, has increased significantly. The proportion reaching Proficient, which shows "competency over challenging subject matter" in each grade, is unchanged.

In 12th grade there has been no significant change either in the average score or in the proportion of students reaching any of the achievement levels. The achievement of every racial and ethnic group has stayed about the same even as there has been a substantial increase in the proportion of students from the two most disadvantaged minorities, Hispanics and blacks. The combined total of blacks and Hispanics in NAEP's 12th grade sample went up from 20 percent in 1994 to 25 percent last year, reflecting the change in the racial and ethnic composition of American high schools.

The achievement gaps are still substantial. We are right to worry about them. We must do much more to eliminate them. But in geography there is reason to be encouraged by our efforts.

The change in ethnic background in the students attending American schools reflects the tide of immigration into the United States. This has grown over the last three decades and became larger than ever during the 1990s, according to the new census reports. It has happened on a tremendous scale in Fairfax County, where I work as superintendent.

Foreign-born students and first-generation Americans now make up nearly a quarter of our enrollment. The students come to our schools from more than 150 countries, speaking over 100 different languages. We send parent newsletters home in five languages beside English—Farsi, Korean, Spanish, Urdu, and Vietnamese. The proportion of children in Fairfax County public schools who are Hispanic or Asian—and most of these are immigrants or the children of immigrants—is now 30 percent, up from only 8 percent twenty years ago and 19 percent in 1991-92. Obviously, having more students from more countries has affected our interest in geography and increased the need for our students to know and understand it.

There are others reasons for learning geography as well. Certainly, there is a global economy. Look at our cars. Log on to the Internet. Even the prosperity and security of our own vast country are interdependent with others. And last September 11 it became tragically clear that what happens in Afghanistan and the Middle East can affect our very lives.

"Who are these people?" we wondered, after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia. "Why do people live the way they do?" "Why do they think the way they do?" "What shapes their attitudes toward America?" Geography—along with history and economics and the other social studies—helps students find answers to these questions. And geography provides the context for the other subjects. Where the oil we use comes from clearly matters. So do the relationships between the environment—be it desert or a lush river basin—and the societies that depend on it and develop upon it. So do the relationships between various peoples and cultures, which reflect, to an important degree, where natural resources are located and where economic development has occurred.

The NAEP Geography assessment tests in all these areas. As Commissioner Phillips has explained, the assessment reaches far beyond place-name geography, though students are expected to know the names of many places. In NAEP there are also many questions that require applications and analytical skills, where students must use what they know to explain a situation.

The National Assessment assesses performance, but because of its structure as a representative-sample survey, it cannot tell us why students do well or poorly or, in the case of geography, why performance has improved. However, according to the background questions asked of students and teachers, there clearly has been more emphasis on geography in the school curriculum. For example, the proportion of eighth graders who report studying countries and cultures at least once a week increased from 52 percent in 1994 to 63 percent last year. The proportion using maps and globes at least weekly rose from 39 to 46 percent.

Certainly, there has been more attention paid to geography education in Fairfax County and in the state of Virginia. Geography is now included explicitly in the county social studies curriculum throughout elementary and middle school. And the required high school courses in world and U.S. history now incorporate a very strong geography component. The Virginia state Standards of Learning, whose testing began three years ago, have a geography section at every grade level tested.

Still, despite the forward movement, there remains considerable room for improvement in the NAEP Geography results. The proportion with Basic-level knowledge is reasonably high-about three—quarters in grades 4 and 8. But in 12th grade, 29 percent fall below that standard, which represents just "partial mastery" of the knowledge and skills we believe they should have.

And the proportion of students reaching the Proficient level is relatively small. Just 25 percent of 12th graders can demonstrate the knowledge and skills needed to interpret maps, to describe the physical and cultural features of major regions, and to discuss the economic, political, and social factors that define the various parts of the world. Yes, that is a challenging standard, but it is one that eventually all students should reach in order to understand our complex world. It requires not only considerable knowledge, but also the ability to apply that knowledge to analyzing the world around us. And it is here, unfortunately, that many students fall short.

For example, 61 percent of high school seniors know that Hinduism is the mostly widely-practiced religion in India. But only about a third can explain clearly why the population center of the United States has shifted westward over the past two centuries.

The new NAEP results show that we can move forward when we put our minds and efforts to it. Clearly, geography is coming back into the curriculum again after decades in eclipse. I agree with the new federal legislation—No Child Left Behind—that reading and math skills are of critical importance. But the social studies, including geography, are crucial too. Our students must understand their world as well as master basic skills. It is important that NAEP keeps shining its light on this subject, and that our schools continue to improve how they teach it.