The Nation’s Report Card: How the Health Crisis Disruption and Virtual Learning Affected Fourth- and Eighth-Grade Students
The Nation’s Report Card offers the first detailed look into how health crisis disruptions and virtual learning affected fourth- and eighth-graders across the country.
The findings are based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading and math exams and the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the Education Department.
“The results of today’s Nation’s Report Card are appalling and unacceptable,” US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said Friday during a briefing before the report’s release official on Monday.
Scores on the eighth-grade math exams declined across most racial and ethnic groups as well as for lower, middle and high performing students. Fourth-grade math scores went down for all racial and ethnic groups, except Native Hawaiian-Pacific Islanders.
“Eighth grade is that gateway to more advanced mathematical course taking,” Carr told reporters before the report’s release. There is something missing from these students. They’re missing these important skills that will prepare them eventually for (science, technology, engineering and math) level careers.”
In 5,780 schools there were 116,200 fourth- and eighth- grade students who performed well on the math exams. 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 widened in the late 2000s, with the score declines in math for black and Hispanic students further widening those gaps.
“What we’re seeing is (lower performing) students … dropping even faster and we’re also seeing students who were not showing declines – students at the top, meaning students at the higher performing levels – they were holding steady before the pandemic or even improving,” Carr said. “Now all the students, regardless of their ability, are dropping. That is the point that we need to take away from this report.
When the Pandemic struck, schools were closed and classes became online and in-person 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 Impact of the Pandemic on the Children’s Development of Remote and Hybrid Learning in the 21st Century and the Role of Distance Learning in Education
“And let’s not forget that remote learning looks very differently all across the United States. The quality – all of the factors that were associated with implementing remote learning – it is extremely complex.”
Carr said more analysis is needed to understand the impact the Pandemic had on the declines.
“This must be a wake-up call for the country that we have to make education a priority,” Beverly Perdue, former governor of North Carolina and chair of the National Assessment Governing Board that oversees the test, said in a statement.
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. “In the future, will kids be more accustomed to the digital world due to the fact that they are getting super acquainted with the cyberspace and technological context?”
As we try to get out of this, students who were affected will receive less than those who were unaffected, says a researcher at the John Hopkins University School of Education.
The researchers say that policy initiatives should help children recover lost skills. “This isn’t going to be something that we catch up in a year or two, when everything is back to normal — I think this is going to be a decade long,” says Neitze. We need to rethink our education and change how we do it to make up for it.