Predicting the Drop of Public School Attendance During the Pandemic: The Effects of State and Local Demographic Conditions on K-12 Education
Shrinking memberships. K-12 public school attendance fell by 1.1 million people in the first full academic year of the Pandemic, and then another 130,000 people in the second full academic year. New Stanford-led research finds that 26 percent of that decline was caused by students switching to home-schooling and 14 percent by students leaving for private schools. Another 34 percent of the decline is hard to track, but some students were probably going truant, doing unregistered home-schooling or simply opting out of kindergarten. The decline of the school-age population explains it all. In the years ahead, enrollments, and the funding streams that go with them, will most likely decline further as birthrates fall.
The alarming findings are based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading and math exams, often called the “Nation’s Report Card” and conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the Education Department.
The results of the report are unacceptable, and appalling, according to the Secretary of Education.
A month and a half later, NAEP results show that math and reading scores for 9-year-olds fell from 2020 to 2022, a level not seen in decades.
Carr told reporters before the report was to be released that eighth grade is the gateway to advanced mathematical course taking. This is what the students are missing. They’re missing these important skills that will prepare them eventually for (science, technology, engineering and math) level careers.”
The math exams reflected the performance of 116,200 fourth-graders in 5,780 schools, and 111,000 eighth-graders in 5,190 schools. The reading tests were given to 108,200 fourth-graders in 5,780 schools and 111,300 eighth-graders in 5,190 schools.
The gaps between White students and Black and Hispanic students were larger in 2022 than three years ago, with greater score declines in math for Black and Hispanic students further widening those gaps.
Lower performing students are dropping even faster, and we also see students at the top who were holding steady before the pandemic or even improving, Carr said. “Now all the students, regardless of their ability, are dropping. That’s the point we need to be taking from this report.
While the declines are only a small part of the dynamics of school during the Pandemic, they are caused by the fact that schools were closed and more classes were online in some cities.
“There’s nothing in this data that tells us that there is a measurable difference in the performance between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed,” Carr said.
The Rise and Fall of Remote Learning in the United States, as seen in the State of the Union Address by Representative Tom Carr, Ms. Perdue, Ph.D., PhD, Universita Libre, Calif.
“And let’s not forget that remote learning looks very differently all across the United States. All of the factors that were involved in implementing remote learning are very complex.
Carr said more analysis is needed to understand the role the pandemic played in the declines, along with other factors such as teacher shortages and bullying.
Beverly Perdue is the chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the test, and she said that it was time to make education a priority in the country.
There are, however, some skills that children might have developed during the pandemic as a result of remote or hybrid teaching, says Luka Lucic, a psychologist at the Pratt Institute in New York City. “Kids were getting super familiarized with the cyberspace and technological context, and will in the future be much more native to the digital world.”
Students who suffered during the Pandemic will not get the help they need as we try to get out of it.
Policy initiatives to help children to recover lost learning and skills are urgently needed, researchers say. This is going to be a long time, and it will not be something that we catch up in a year or two. “We need to rethink schooling and make substantial changes to the structure and way that we do education to make this up.”
Discipline problems are worse. The swine flu has led to lower social and emotional development among public school students, say more than 80% of public schools. In the fall of 2021,Denver public schools had a 21 percent increase in fighting.
The parents have begun to adjust their thinking because they are aware of the new realities. Voters trust Democrats more on education. But, as Nat Malkus pointed out in National Affairs, by 2022 Republicans were as trusted as Democrats by voters, if not more so.
But this is not happening. In his State of the Union address, Biden offered no ambitious plans to fix America’s ailing schools. The Republican Party is unable to give a full sentence on the subject of school reform, even in the midst of a crisis that will irreparably damage America.
Vaccination for Covid and Other Influential Viruses: Question-and-Announcement from the Experts on Coronaviruses
When will the disease come to an end? We asked three experts — two immunologists and an epidemiologist — to weigh in on this and some of the hundreds of other questions we’ve gathered from readers recently, including how to make sense of booster and test timing, recommendations for children, whether getting covid is just inevitable and other pressing queries.
How will the virus change? As a group of scientists who study viruses explains, “There’s no reason, at least biologically, that the virus won’t continue to evolve.” From a different angle, the science writer David Quammen surveys some of the highly effective tools and techniques that are now available for studying Covid and other viruses, but notes that such knowledge alone won’t blunt the danger.
What would Covid look like? David Wallace Wells writes that by one estimate, 100,000 Americans could die each year from the coronavirus. It will require a creative effort to increase and sustain high levels of vaccination. Akiko Iwasaki writes that new vaccines delivered through the nose could be part of the answer.