The COVID-19 pandemic caused historic learning setbacks for children in the US, sparing no state or region as it erased decades of academic progress, the results released on Monday of a national test showed.
Across the country, math scores saw their largest decreases ever. Reading scores dropped to 1992 levels. Nearly four in 10 eighth graders failed to grasp basic math concepts. Not a single state saw a notable improvement in their average test scores, with some simply treading water at best, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) said.
It tested hundreds of thousands of fourth and eighth graders across the US this year, the first time the test had been given since 2019.
Photo: AP
“It is a serious wakeup call for us all,” Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the US Department of Education, said in an interview. “In NAEP, when we experience a one or two-point decline, we’re talking about it as a significant impact on a student’s achievement. In math, we experienced an eight-point decline — historic for this assessment.”
Researchers usually think of a 10-point gain or drop as equivalent to about a year of learning.
Restrictions in the US amid the COVID-19 pandemic upended everyday life and left millions learning from home for months or more.
US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said it was a sign that schools need to redouble their efforts, using billions of dollars that the US Congress gave schools to help students recover.
“Let me be very clear: These results are not acceptable,” Cardona said.
The NAEP test is typically given every two years. It was taken from January to March by a sample of students in every state, along with 26 of the nation’s largest school districts. Scores had been stalling even before the pandemic, but the new results show decreases on a scale not seen before.
In math and reading, students scored lower than those tested in 2019, but while reading scores dipped, math scores plummeted by the largest margins in the history of the NAEP program, which began in 1969.
Math scores were worst among eighth graders, with 38 percent earning scores deemed “below basic” — a cutoff that measures, for example, whether students can find the third angle of a triangle if they are given the other two. That is worse than 2019, when 31 percent of eighth graders scored below that level.
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