Math and reading scores among 13-year-olds in the US fell to their lowest levels in decades, with math scores plunging by the largest margin ever recorded, the results of a test known as the nation’s report card showed.
The results, which were to be released yesterday, are the latest measure of the deep learning setbacks incurred during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
While earlier testing revealed the magnitude of learning loss in the US, the latest test casts light on the persistence of those setbacks, dimming hopes of swift academic recovery.
More than two years after most students returned to in-person classes, there are still “worrisome signs about student achievement,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the US Department of Education.
“The ‘green shoots’ of academic recovery that we had hoped to see have not materialized,” Carr said in a statement.
In the national sample of 13-year-old students, average math scores fell by 9 points from 2020 to this year and reading scores fell by 4 points.
The test, formally called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, was administered from October to December last year to 8,700 students in each subject.
Similar setbacks were reported last year when broader results showed the effect of lockdowns on fourth and eighth-grade students in the US.
Math and reading scores had been sliding before the pandemic, but the latest results show a precipitous drop that erases earlier gains in the years leading up to 2012.
Scores on the math exam, which has been given since 1973, are now at their lowest levels since 1990. Reading scores are their lowest since 2004.
Especially alarming to officials were outsized decreases among the lowest-performing students. Students at all achievement levels saw decreases, but while stronger students saw slides of 6 to 8 points, lower-performing students saw decreases of 12 to 14 points, the results showed.
Lockdown setbacks appear to be lingering even as schools across the US spend billions of dollars to help students catch up. The federal government sent historic sums of money to schools in 2021, allowing many to expand tutoring, summer classes and other recovery efforts.
However, the nation’s 13-year-olds, who were 10 when the pandemic started, are still struggling, Carr said.
“The strongest advice I have is that we need to keep at it,” she said. “It is a long road ahead of us.”
US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the results confirm what the administration of US President Joe Biden knew all along: “That the pandemic would have a devastating impact on students’ learning across the country and that it would take years of effort and investment to reverse the damage as well as address the 11-year decline that preceded it.”
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