The release of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing that American students lost historic ground in basic math and literacy skills during the pandemic has generated three responses.
The first brings a glass half-full approach to the bleak results from skills testing done in fall 2022, arguing that while declines, especially in math basics such as numeration and multiplication, are alarming, they’re fixable.
“Not to say that basic number sense and calculations aren’t important, but that’s a gap that can be closed,” said Lisa Kopka, a Maryland National Board certified math teacher, at a press event Wednesday explaining the 2023 NAEP Long-Term Trend assessment results for 13-year-olds, who were fourth and fifth graders when COVID-19 upended schools.
The students, mostly eighth graders now bound for high school, took the test during the 2022-2023 school year. Scores plummeted since the test — designed to provide a more extended national perspective on student performance over time — was last given in 2019-2020. Typically administered every four years, the long-term NAEP was moved up a year to provide data on post-pandemic student performance.
“It’s a small problem to close a gap in basic math skills and something that can be done while addressing higher order math. Trust math teachers that they will attempt to close that gap, and not at the price of critical thinking,” said Kopka, a volunteer with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
Martin West, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a member of NAEP’s governing board, leaned more toward a half-empty glass view at the announcement of the dramatic slide in basic skills.
“The picture that has emerged so far has been sobering, showing unprecedented declines in students’ knowledge and skills in every subject tested, in every age group or grade level and in virtually every state and school system across the country. Today’s results will provide additional cause for concern, even for alarm,” said West.
A third and most extreme reaction essentially argues the glass contains cyanide, public schools are on life support and American families deserve an antidote. Among those making such declarations is Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who said in a statement, “This is intolerable. These scores make the case for school choice better than any other argument.”
To me, the NAEP scores make a stronger case for examining the larger forces at work in student achievement, especially in reading, which is influenced by what children experience in their homes. The NAEP results show students struggle with even basic skills of searching out information, making inferences and identifying the main idea.
The question for parents is whether children see adults engrossed in a book or glued to a screen.
“As a public school teacher, I can hope parents are readers. Kids, particularly little ones, who grow up in households where that happens have a huge step up,” said Carol Jago, associate director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA and former president of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is also a past NAEP governing board member.
The fall in reading predates COVID-19 but the pandemic accelerated the trend, said Jago in a telephone interview. Like many other educators, Jago believes smartphones and the hours that American students spend on them have diminished both time for reading and interest in it.
Even a good student reading “The Great Gatsby” with a smartphone next to them pays a price, she said. “They are getting a text message every two minutes. No teenager is going to ignore those messages. When they go back to the page they were reading, they have to start over. It makes reading harder.”
Jago’s solution is not to ban phones, a battle she says we can’t win with more than half of U.S. teens reporting they are online “constantly.” She advises teachers to help teens see the oversized claim on their time from screens.
“Let’s have them keep track of every minute they are on a screen and then say to them, ‘I need one hour of that time for you to read.’ We can’t tell teenagers what to do, but we can help them take control of their own lives,” she said.
Jago is confident teachers will return to classrooms in the fall energized to address gaps. “Teachers see the new school year as an opportunity to do it better, to think through these issues and help kids in their charge find a way to take pleasure in literature, in literacy, in the way books and stories can open up their worlds.”
Her optimism is echoed by Colorado middle school math teacher and department chair Mark Miller, a former NAEP governing board member who also served on a standard-setting panel of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
In a telephone interview, Miller said he believes teachers will persevere and kids will recover. “When we know where we are, when we assess each student in each classroom and have caring and committed teachers getting to know their students and building relationships, the math will take care of itself. When we make connections with kids, we can take them further.”
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