National test results released Thursday underscore the devastating impact the pandemic is having on American schoolchildren, with 9-year-olds’ math and reading performance at levels seen 20 years ago. depressed.
This year, for the first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress Test began tracking student performance in the 1970s, a 9-year-old student Mathematics scores fell, and reading scores fell by the biggest margin in over 30 years.
The decline spanned nearly all races and income levels, and was significantly worse for the worst-performing students. Percentile students dropped 12 points in math, a fourfold impact.
Peggy G. Carr, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal agency that conducted the exam earlier this year, said: The test was conducted on a national sample of 14,800 of her 9-year-olds and compared to her results from tests performed by the same age group in early 2020, just before the pandemic took hold in the United States.
Even before the pandemic, there was a split between the best and worst performers, but now “the lowest-performing students are dropping off rapidly,” says Dr. Carr.
In mathematics, black students lost 13 points, while white students lost 5 points, widening the gap between the two groups. Studies document the severe impact school closures have had on low-income students, as well as Black and Hispanic students. One reason is that their schools are likely to continue distance learning for the long term.
While a drop in test scores can indicate that many 9-year-olds partially understand what they are reading, few can infer the emotions of characters from what they read. I mean In mathematics, students may know simple arithmetic facts, but few students can add fractions that have a common denominator.
This setback can have a huge impact on a generation of children who later have to move beyond the basics in elementary school in order to grow up.
Susanna Loeb, Director of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, said: Educational inequality.
“The number one reason to worry is that children with low grades do poorly,” she added. Being too late can lead to a lack of motivation for school, making it less likely that you will finish high school or go to college, she said.
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The National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered the gold standard for testing. Experts consider it more reliable because, unlike state tests, it’s standardized nationwide, consistent, and doesn’t try to hold individual schools accountable for results. .
Test results provided a snapshot of only one age group. Usually she is in 3rd or 4th grade and she is 9 years old. (Fourth grade and her other eighth grade results will be announced state by state this fall.)
Andrew Ho, a professor of education at Harvard University and an expert on educational testing and a former member of the committee, said: supervise the exam.
Over time, reading scores, especially math scores, have generally trended upward or stabilized since the tests were first administered in the early 1970s. This includes a period of great progress from the late 1990s to his mid-2000s.
However, over the past decade or so, student achievement has leveled off rather than improved, widening the gap between low and high performing students.
Then a pandemic hit, shutting schools across the country almost overnight. Teachers were giving classes on her Zoom, and students were sitting at home struggling to learn online.
In some parts of the country, the worst disruptions were short-lived and schools reopened that fall. But in other areas, especially in large cities populated by low-income students and students of color, schools remained closed for months, and some did not fully reopen until last year.
According to Dr. Ho, the national test was a tale of a “decade of progress,” a “decade of inequality,” and the “shock” of the pandemic, and it came with a one-two punch.
“It has erased progress and exacerbated inequalities,” said Dr. Ho. “Now our work is cut short.”
He estimates that losing one point on the national exam is equivalent to about three weeks of study. So a good student who lost 3 points in math could catch up in just 9 weeks, but a poor student who lost 12 points would take him 36 weeks to make up, or almost 9. requires months. It still lags far behind its more advanced peers.
There are signs that students who have fully returned to school are starting to learn at a normal pace again, but experts say it will take longer than a normal school day to close the gaps created by the pandemic. I’m here.
Janice K. Jackson, who until last year headed Chicago’s public schools and is now director of Chiefs for Change, which represents the state’s education and schools, said the results were a “strength of unity” to focus on keeping students on track. Screaming, said it should be. district leader. She invoked the Marshall Plan, an American initiative to help rebuild Europe after World War II, and called on the federal government to provide big ideas.
“How dramatic it is for me,” she said, adding that politicians, school leaders, teachers’ unions, and parents set aside the many disagreements that flared up during the pandemic, and that students He added that we must unite to help recover.
“No more arguing, back-and-forth, biting, pointing,” she said. “Everyone should treat this like a crisis.”
But if it’s hard to do, the solution can be pretty basic. Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a member of the National Assessment Board that oversees testing, believes that underperforming students have more to learn, whether in the form of tutoring or extended He said he only needs to spend time in school or summer school.
The federal government has earmarked $122 billion to help students recover, the largest single investment in American schools, and has devoted at least 20% of that budget to addressing academic delays. I have to spend to get it back. However, some schools have difficulty recruiting teachers, let alone tutors, and others may have to spend 20% or more of their budget to fill a significant gap.
“There is no silver bullet in sight,” said Dr. West.