This article presents the findings of the two reports released by the US Education Department. The reports revealed that more high school students are taking advanced classes and earning high grades, but they are not doing any better on a federal test intended to determine how much they have learned. The performance of high school seniors on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress declined from 1992 to 2005, even though high school students were taking more classes in tougher subjects, and their median grade-point averages were rising steadily from 2.68 in 1990 to 2.98 in 2005. Experts on elementary and secondary schools suggested that the findings of the two studies, taken together, might point to the effects of grade inflation, or a watering down of the curriculum in advanced high-school classes, or the presence of students with a wider range of ability levels in such classrooms, or some combination of those or other factors.