U.S. students in most states and nearly every demographic have experienced troubling setbacks in math and reading, according to an authoritative national exam released Monday, offering the most definitive indictment yet of the impact of the pandemic on millions of school children.
In maths, the results were particularly devastating, representing the steepest declines ever on the National Assessment of Education Progress, known as the National Report Card, which tests a large sample of fourth- and seventh-grade students. eighth grade and dates back to the early 1990s.
In the first test results since the start of the pandemic, eighth graders’ math scores fell in nearly every state. A measly 26% of eighth graders were proficient, down from 34% in 2019.
Fourth-graders fared only marginally better, with declines in 41 states. Only 36% of fourth graders were proficient in math, compared to 41%.
Reading scores also fell in more than half of the states, continuing a downward trend that began even before the pandemic. No state showed noticeable improvement in reading. And only about one in three students have achieved proficiency standards, a designation that means students have demonstrated their skills and are on track to succeed in the future.
And for the country’s most vulnerable students, the pandemic has left them even more behind. The declines in their test scores were often steeper, and their climbs to proficiency are now much more daunting.
“I want to be very clear: the results of today’s national report card are appalling and unacceptable,” said Miguel Cardona, the education secretary. “This is a moment of truth for education. How we respond to this will determine not only our recovery, but also our nation’s standing in the world. »
The exam, which is administered by federal officials and considered more rigorous than many state tests, sampled nearly 450,000 fourth and eighth graders at more than 10,000 schools between January and March. Results are detailed for each state, as well as more than two dozen major school districts.
The findings raise important questions about where the country is headed from here. Last year, the federal government made its biggest investment in American schools — $123 billion, or about $2,400 per student — to help students catch up. School districts were required to spend at least 20% of the money on school recovery, a threshold some experts say is insufficient given the scale of the problem.
Learn more about schools and education in the United States
With funding set to expire in 2024, research suggests it could take billions more dollars and several years for students to recover properly.
Test results could be seized upon as political fodder – just before the midterms – to reignite the debate over how long schools should have remained closed, an issue that has galvanized many parents and teachers.
The grim results underscored how school closures hurt students, but the researchers cautioned against jumping to conclusions about whether states where schools remained remote longer had significantly worse outcomes. .
Decisions about how long schools should be closed often varied even within states, depending on the local school district and virus transmission rates. And other factors, such as poverty levels and specific education policies in a state, can also influence the results.
The picture was mixed, and performance varied by grade level and subject in ways that were not always clear.
For example, Texas, where many schools opened earlier, held steady in reading but saw declines similar to national averages in math.
In California, which stood out for being cautious in reopening schools, scores fell slightly less than national averages in several categories – roughly in line with Florida, which was a leader in opening up schools earlier. Los Angeles remained closed longer than almost anywhere else in the country, according to data from Burbio, a school-tracking site, but it was the only place to show significant gains in eighth grade reading.
“Comparing states is tricky and people will probably go to the red state, to the blue state, which is not the most useful framing,” said Sean Reardon, professor of education at the University of Stanford, which is conducting further analysis to try to come to more definitive. answers.
The math problem
Students today are doing even better than 30 years ago in mathematics. Over the past decade, math scores had remained stable, with small fluctuations here and there.
But this year, that stability has been shattered.
In eighth-grade math, the average score fell in all but one state. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia saw double-digit declines, including better-performing states like Massachusetts and New Jersey, and worse-performing states like Oklahoma and New Mexico. Utah was the only state where declines in eighth-grade math were not found to be statistically significant.
Places like Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, DC, dropped by double digits in fourth- and eighth-grade math.
Older students’ scores were of particular concern because “eighth grade is the gateway to more advanced math classes,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of the Department of Education. ‘Education, which administers the exam. She said students may be missing fundamental skills in algebra and geometry, which would be needed in high school and for future careers in math and science.
For example, compared to 2019, fewer eighth graders could measure the length of a diagonal of a rectangle or convert miles to yards.
Reading has been less affected, perhaps in part because students have received more help from their parents during the pandemic.
Matthew Chingos, who directs the Urban Institute’s Center on Education Data and Policy, a research group, said the national findings are consistent with other data that suggests math scores, in general, tend to fall. depend more on what is taught in school. , while reading scores can also be determined by “what is happening at home”.
Still, reading was not spared, and across both tiers, more than half of the states saw significant declines. By 2019, reading scores had also declined in many states.
A sharp decline, a wider gap
The pandemic has laid bare the deep and troubling inequalities that dominate many aspects of American life, especially in education.
By fourth grade, for both math and reading, students in the bottom 25th percentile lost more ground than students at the top of the class, leaving the lowest performing students even further behind.
And black and Hispanic students, who started behind their white and Asian peers, saw steeper declines than those groups in fourth-grade math.
Black and Hispanic students are more likely to attend segregated schools in poverty, and those schools have stayed apart longer than wealthier schools during the pandemic, widening the divides.
The impact has been particularly marked for students in difficulty. In a survey included in the test, only half of low-performing fourth graders in math said they had access to a computer at any time during the 2020-21 school year, compared to 80% of high-performing students.
Similarly, 70% said they have a quiet place to work at least some of the time, compared to 90% of top performers.
In a bright spot, most major city school districts, including New York, Dallas and Miami-Dade, were flat in reading.
Raymond Hart, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which works with 77 of the nation’s largest urban public school districts, saw this as an encouraging sign that the recourse districts in place could make a difference. “We believe recovery and rebound is possible for students,” he said.
But students in some districts like Cleveland and Memphis could afford to lose little ground. Many are experiencing deep poverty and were already struggling to enter the pandemic, but they have seen steep declines this year in both grade levels and subjects.
In Detroit, where nearly one in two schoolchildren live in poverty, just 6% of fourth-graders were proficient in math in 2019. This year, that number has dropped to 3%.
Now what?
Test scores aren’t the only factors that matter to a child’s future, but research has documented the importance of school readiness, starting early.
Students who don’t read well in elementary school are more likely to drop out of high school or not graduate on time. And the ninth grade — where the eighth-graders who took the test in the spring now find themselves — is seen as a critical year for preparing students to graduate from high school and attend college.
“We need to do something to better target our resources to students who have been historically underserved,” said Denise Forte, acting chief executive of the Education Trust, which focuses on closing the gaps for disadvantaged students.
Much of the nation’s hope for recovery hinges on the billions of dollars in pandemic aid. But the districts were given wide latitude in spending the money.
“Many districts don’t have a concerted plan for math,” said Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, which tracks pandemic relief spending. She is among those who believe districts will need to dedicate more than 20% of their relief funds to school resumption.
One option, according to research, is simply more time. Frequent tutoring in small groups and doubling up on math classes are among the strategies that have shown promise.
Kevin Huffman, a former Tennessee education commissioner who is now the chief executive of Accelerate, a nonprofit focused on tutoring, urged leaders to put aside pointing fingers at what isn’t. didn’t work during the pandemic, and instead made a “moral commitment” to help students recover.
“We cannot, as a country, declare that 2019 was the pinnacle of American education,” he said.