U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan offers Washington schools chief personal congrats on rising test scores

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U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, shown during a 2011 meeting with Oregon teachers, "couldn't be more thrilled" with Washington's progress on national reading and math exams. Oregon showed very little progress on the same tests.

(Jamie Francis / The Oregonian / 2011)

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

last week to praise the "remarkable progress" that Washington educators have made, as measured by scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Washington students' performance on the fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math exams was among the highest in the nation

and represented some of the fasted improvement among states.

Oregon schools chief Rob Saxton did not get any such call, which is not surprising, given that

Oregon's scores were largely stagnant and middle-of-the-pack.

Oregon eighth-graders did show improvement in reading.

But Gov. John Kitzhaber did get a call from Duncan on Thursday, said Ben Cannon, director of Oregon's Higher Education Coordinating Commission and a former education adviser to Kitzhaber. Kitzhaber told Cannon that Duncan's quick call was "congratulatory" about Oregon's latest scores, Cannon said.

, Duncan is brief but effusive: "Congratulations on the great, great work on the NAEP exams. You should be just extraordinarily proud. Whatever can do to thank your hard-working teachers and principals for me, that'd be fantastic. To see you be one of the fastest improving states in the country, improved in every category, very few states did that. It's just remarkable progress... Couldn't be more thrilled with what you're doing there."

-- Betsy Hammond