Years After the Pandemic, the Lowest-Performing Students Are Still Significantly Behind

New scores from the Nation's Report Card test reveal continued declines for already struggling students.

New test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card, indicate that four years after the onset of the pandemic lockdowns, American schoolchildren are still struggling to catch up to pre-pandemic achievement levels.

"Today's NAEP results reveal a heartbreaking reality for American students and confirm our worst fears: not only did most students not recover from pandemic-related learning loss, but those students who were the most behind and needed the most support have fallen even further behind," reads a Wednesday Education Department press release. "Change must happen, and it must happen now."

These latest NAEP results looked at achievement for fourth and eighth graders in reading and math. Overall, test scores declined slightly when compared to 2022, the last time students were tested and still remained below pre-pandemic levels. However, the most revealing results came when separating student performance based on percentile. While students performing in the 90th or 75th percentile have mostly rebounded, declines for students performing the worst were much steeper. For example, fourth-grade math scores have returned to pre-pandemic levels for high-achieving students, while the lowest-achieving students have seen an eight-point drop in scores since 2019, declining from 199 to 191 on a 500-point scale.

It's worth noting that the children currently being tested were quite young when the pandemic began. This latest round of testing happened in early 2024, meaning that the fourth graders were in kindergarten and the eighth graders were in fourth grade when lockdowns began. Unsurprisingly, the eighth graders were more severely affected by the score declines, especially in math. While fourth and eighth graders suffered the same average five-point decline since 2019, fourth-grade math and reading scores declined only three points while eighth-grade scores declined eight points.

What do these scores mean? In this year's test, almost 1 in 4 eighth graders were "below NAEP Basic" in math, meaning that they didn't even have "partial mastery" of the skills necessary to succeed in eighth-grade math. Around 1 in 3 eighth graders were below "NAEP Basic" in reading.

"If we're saying that a third of this year's ninth graders are below NAEP Basic, we're saying that one-third of these kids likely can't tell us the main idea of a text," Julia Rafal-Baer, a National Assessments Governing Board member and former assistant commissioner of the New York State Education Department, told the education-focused news website The 74. "They can't draw any explicit features from that text. What does that mean for these kids? What's the plan to re-engage them and improve their outcomes?"

These results show that, while children who were already doing well have managed to rebound from pandemic score declines, the children who are struggling have continued to face further difficulties, even as pandemic lockdowns shift further out of view.

Comments

[Yuno Hoo]

"They can't draw any explicit features from that text. What does that mean for these kids?"

That they qualify for a lifetime of welfare due to their different ability?

Less snarkily, the Nation's Report Card should compare American students to, say, their Japanese "peers".

We'll see how amused the new administration is by this "struggle".

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

With a hearty "thank you" that scumbag Fauci, the greaseball Newsom, in SF the totally incompetent London Breed.
BTW, to give you an idea of her level of incompetence, she had 85 direct reports! As a result, nothing other than hiring other incompetents (and crooks) got done.

[Social Justice is neither]

To be fair, how many of those reports ever did anything that needed to be reported to the Mayor let alone acted on.

Wait, that doesn't seem to help the proggy case.

[Longtobefree]

Clearly the data requires more union teacher/administrators being paid more tax dollars.
And a prohibition on those pesky private schools that show progress.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Don't forget eliminating assessment tests, general.

[Bruce Hayden]

That’s the problem. There was no rational reason to give the teachers that much paid tie off from going to work. Except tat they are big contributors to Dem politicians. None. It was a political payoff for putting Slo Joe in the White House.

The kids faced essentially zero chance of dying from the virus. And they paid for the teachers not having to go to work. Why is the comfort of the teachers supposed to override permanent learning loss for their students?

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

Can't
Advance
Reading
Educational
Skills

Act

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Whats jeffsarcs excuse?

[Uncle Jay]

"Years After the Pandemic, the Lowest-Performing Students Are Still Significantly Behind."

That's what the proggies want: An illiterate or near-illiterate country so they can push their pie-in-the-sky Marxist bullshit more easily.

[Vernon Depner]

They will never catch up. The developmental damage will be with them for life.

the children currently being tested were quite young when the pandemic began.

Yes. The youngest are the most damaged. Isolating them from anyone outside their immediate household, depriving them of normal experiences, and covering their faces and those around them, impaired the development of the youngest the most. Older kids, with some language, cognitive, and social skills already developed, were more resilient against the forced retardation, even though they too suffered. The selfishness and avarice of the teachers' unions and state governments caused this atrocity.

[TJJ2000]

I'm not sure that means anything at-all when the test is....
Are biological genders racist?
1) Yes
2) No

How is that going to test your level of competence in creating goods for anyone?

[SIV]

I'd love to see the standardized test results if Amish kids took it. I think they get like 8 years of schooling taught by teenage girls who have completed the same.

[Vernon Depner]

They would excel at reading and writing, but nothing else.

[Daddyhill]

Doesn't Trump still want to abolish the DOE? With news like this he may be rethinking that, since it gives him more ammunition to use against public school advocates and lockdown apologizers. Not only that, if it's factually correct that "...one-third of these kids likely can't tell us the main idea of a text...", he'll want to get behind those who want centralized control over the main ideas of texts they can't just burn, the Constitution for example. One main idea, perhaps, will be that Article I actually says something like, "NB: All of the above stated powers and responsibility of the Congress are subject to line-by-line review and denial by the President."

[DesigNate]

The DOE has fuck all to do with this and in all likihood, would just make the situation worse.

[JasonT20]

You might want to look into where the "Nation's Report Card" comes from. That is, what agency is responsible for creating it, administering it, and analyzing the results of it.

Do away with the DOE -> there will be no nationally administered test that a random sample of all students in the U.S. will take. Thus, there will be no source of data that isn't subject to self-selection biases (SAT/ACT are college entrance tests that not all HS students take), that covers children in elementary and middle school as well as HS students, and that is uniform across all U.S. states and D.C.

You'll be left with just the tests states design and administer to within their own borders based on their own standards. The lack of uniformity by itself makes comparing the results of Florida students on the Florida state tests to the results of NY students on the NY state tests unlikely to have any validity. Add in the way states change the tests, including how they are administered and scored, regularly in ways that aren't transparent and you'll be in a situation where no one will be able to say with any confidence how well the U.S. education system is functioning. Well, scratch that. Politicians and activists will still make their claims, but they won't have even the limited data we have now to back those claims up.

[John Rohan]

The DOE was founded in 1980. There were no national measurements or test scores before 1980? There's always another way to do something.

[JasonT20]

There's always another way to do something.

Depends on what your goal is, actually. If the goal is to have a reliable and valid measure of how students all across the whole country are performing, then you need data sources that encompass all of those students. Having different tests in different states, which are aimed at each state's different standards and curriculum priorities, and tests that mostly the higher performing subset of older American students take, is not going to be sufficient to get reliable and valid data for that purpose.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

and in any class (think Math or Chemistry) that drags down those who would otherwise do much better. The long-term continuing effect of this will be colleges pandering to the most unprepared. Student enrollment is declining ( "demographic cliff") and colleges will be doing whatever they can to get more students. Those who will need that help will be more unprepared than was the case historically. Parents must recover almost full power over education. This teacher sees no light except for parent control. And, yes, that can end badlly.

Even dumb spineless Biden was going to open the schools earlier but caved to teachers unions.

Don't forgert the headlines

Biden’s inexcusable failure to reopen schools
Appeasing teachers unions seems more of a priority for administration than our children’s future

[Zipcreature]

Can’t score low on progress tests - if you redefine meritocratic testing as WH-ITE Supremacy!

Then everyone scores the same (except the WH-ites they obviously get -5!) lolz

[John Rohan]

Allowing about 8 million migrants to enter the country under Biden, many of whom children who don't speak English, definitely had some impact here since we are required to pay for their schooling.

[Alex]

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