Post-pandemic nose-dive: Why student test scores are raising alarms among parents and teachers
Post-pandemic nose-dive: Why student test scores are raising alarms among parents and teachers
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What is school avoidance? Student anxiety spikes post COVID
School avoidance has been on the rise for years, but experts say more students are struggling to get back to class since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Josh Morgan, USA TODAY
Five years ago, teachers shut their classroom doors and scrambled to set up video conference for their students,Now, new national test scores show America's kids – especially the nation's lowest achieving students – have yet to return to pre-pandemic academic levels.
Teachers, parents and education leaders are raising alarms about the state of education after seeing the sobering results of the U.S. Department of Education's latest Nation's Report Card results Wednesday. The data shows a post-pandemic nose-dive in literacy scores and a widening achievement gap between the nation's highest and lowest learners in math and reading skills.
Many of them are calling on national leaders and school officials to speed up learning recovery. Strengthening American education, they say, is urgent.
"We need to figure out what we got wrong and what we need to adjust," said Tequilla Brownie, CEO of TNTP, a nonprofit organization working to redesign education to help students of color and those living in poverty.
New test scores reveal: Kids' reading, math skills are worsening. What's going on?
The U.S. has a literacy crisis
Fourth and eighth graders tested at lower reading levels on the National Assessment for Educational Progress in 2024 than before COVID-19. The achievement gap also widened between the nation's highest and lowest performing learners in literacy test scores.
The pandemic exacerbated a reading crisis that began before schools shifted to remote learning, said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. Kids now don't have the joy for reading they once did and teachers have changed the way they teach writing in the digital age, she said.
Adeola Whitney, CEO of a national nonprofit which works to improve equitable access to literacy education called Reading Partners, said it's "alarming" that more students are scoring at low reading levels.
'Reading is a civil right'
"Reading is a civil right that should be afforded to every student in the US. Our children deserve nothing less," Whitney wrote in an email.
Brownie, from TNTP, said she's especially concerned about low-scoring kids who live in poverty - and are at risk of staying in poverty because they aren't skilled in reading.
"Kids that are behind don't have to remain behind, but we have to focus on identifying solutions for kids that need those solutions and implement them," Brownie said.
Temporary COVID-relief funding for education is gone
The Biden administration granted schools $189.5 billion through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) under the American Rescue Plan Act. The funding – given to school leaders to use to accelerate student learning recovery expired in September, yet kids' haven't caught up as planned.
Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, called the new test results a "national disgrace."
"Despite an unprecedented $190 billion in federal investment meant to accelerate learning recovery, too many states have nothing to show for it except worsening outcomes," Rodrigues wrote in an email Wednesday. "It's time to stop pretending that 'business as usual' is acceptable—because these results are a disaster."
Rodrigues called on Congress to investigate how schools spent the COVID-relief money and on the Trump administration to develop a "national strategy to ensure states are delivering on their responsibility to provide every child with a high-quality education," which she said could include state-mandated high-dosage tutoring, extended learning time and high quality learning materials.
Lindsay Dworkin, senior vice president of policy and government affairs at the education assessment company NWEA, echoed Rodrigues's call for urgency given the recent expiration of the temporary funding.
"With the federal emergency funds now used up, it's more important than ever that policy and education leaders focus ever-scarcer resources on evidence-based strategies like combatting chronic absenteeism, scaling high-dosage tutoring, and expanding instructional time through extended school days and summer programming," Dworkin wrote in an email.
'If students aren't in school, they can't learn'
Student chronic absenteeism rates grew from 15% to 26% between 2018 to 2023 due to pandemic-related setbacks, according to an analysis from the American Enterprise Institute. Chronic absenteeism refers to when a student misses 10% or more of the school year.
The new federal data released Wednesday shows that student absenteeism remains a problem for America's schools, and low-performing students are more likely to miss school than other kids.
Five reasons kids are missing school: Chronic absenteeism is schools' 'biggest problem.'
"Absenteeism, which rose over the pandemic period, has declined since the 2022 assessment, but not to pre-pandemic levels," reads a news release from the National Center for Education Statistics.
"We should care because if students aren't in school, then they can't learn," Carr said.
Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
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The teenagers spent time together and had, mostly, stayed in their hometown throughout foster care, letting them keep close with friends and cousins. She and Kay K, the youngest, had lived in other cities and states, sometimes switching foster homes or shelters every few months. 'You learn there's no need to get feelings at all because I'm not going to be here long.' Amy was closest to Kay K because she spent the most time with her in foster care. The duo would 'run up and down the street' together. Sometimes they would sit on a corner, huddled under a blanket and beg for change, acting as if they needed it. They played Mortal Kombat together on the Xbox. Kay K would select Kitana, a princess who fought with steel fans and had run away from the villain who falsely claimed to be her father. Amy always chose Raiden, the god of thunder who led and mentored Earth's defenders. Growing family After years imagining a 'fairy tale' return home, Amy's life wasn't what she expected. Marlena worked all the time. Cousins and aunts always visited or stayed for a while, which meant Amy could never find quiet. Her mom rarely left bed because the medication that tamed her schizophrenia made her lethargic. Amy envied the families she saw on TV and the other kids' moms she met in high school. Why can't my mom be normal? Amy wondered. Why can't you have a normal conversation? Why can't you do normal things? Like, we can't go get our nails done. We can't just go out and eat at a restaurant. School became her safe haven. A place with structure and predictability that was comfortable after so many years in shelters. And then Marlena had a baby. She remembers Amy tying a jump rope to her son's stroller and sprinting around the house with a laughing toddler swinging behind her. 'They had a special bond,' she said. As a teenager, Amy got her nephew dressed for school before going herself. Sometimes she missed activities like swimming, track, cheer and ROTC to come home and care for the boy. Marlena said she never asked Amy to care for her son, who she took to daycare or left with her mom or boyfriend. After watching him on her sixteenth birthday, Amy left with the permission of her mom. No one had ever planned a celebration for her, so she had to do it herself. Marlena came home and didn't know where she was. She reported her missing to police. 'She put her child on another child. I couldn't go anywhere,' Amy said. 'It wasn't like rebellion or anything, but I finally got some freedom. I went to a friend's house. My friend's mom and dad, they took care of me. It was kind of just a weekend getaway.' They got their nails done, played at the arcade and went to the movies. Amy isn't surprised her sister's memory sometimes differed. Her main reflection of the time remains the same. 'It wasn't fair Marlena had to grow up so fast to take care of us,' Amy said. 'We were kids taking care of kids taking care of kids. Because our mom couldn't.' On her own Within the next year, Marlena moved out to her own apartment and enrolled in college to become a registered nurse, pursuing a dream she had paused for years. She left her sisters with their mom. The matriarch, again, was caring for strangers and relatives by giving them a bed in their home. Amy did not have a bedroom. 'I slept on the couch. Or floor,' Amy said. So, she chose to live on her own at 17. She sometimes stayed at an old foster mom's house. She lived with Marlena for a while. She came back to her mom's house. She felt like she was constantly leaving, in search of a calm she couldn't find. She didn't feel stable and struggled to 'find footing as a teenager.' By the time they're 21, former foster youth are less likely than peers to have graduated high school or earned a GED, half as likely to be in college or job training and have lower levels of employment. They're more likely to experience homelessness, become parents or be incarcerated. The risks are highest for youth who 'age out' of the system and are emancipated, like Marlena, and lowest when kids are placed with relatives while in foster care or upon exiting the system. Staying with family helps kids maintain community, cultural and familial bonds – the same social networks that support teens as they transition into adulthood. When the high school told Amy she'd have to repeat a year because they would not accept transfer credits from a previous campus, she decided to get her GED early. At 17, she gave birth several weeks premature. Amy moved in with a 20-something friend who had twin infants. She started college with plans to become a nurse like her sisters. She earned an associate's degree in 2013 and became a certified nursing assistant. Amy met the man who would become her husband. She attended therapy for the first time and began healing old wounds. But while Amy continued college, her health deteriorated. She'd had seizures for years. This was different: fatigue, fevers and joint pain. She was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease, and left college one semester shy of completing coursework to become a registered nurse. For a while, Amy kept working as a peer-support specialist. She mostly helped women like herself, her sisters and her mother overcome poverty, addiction and trauma. She was accomplishing more than the generation before her and helping others do the same. Yet, Amy had kept distance from family during her 20s. She didn't feel any need to talk with them. So, she didn't know how much trouble her youngest sister was having. Sister mom Marlena considers herself 'old school.' She never argued with her mom – even when it came to parenting disagreements. 'I just found another way,' she said. Kay K had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 10. When Kay K started having new symptoms, Marlena convinced her mom to take her 17-year-old sister to the doctor even though she didn't want to go. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, like mom. It was another battle to get Kay K to take the prescribed medications and go to therapy, especially since their mom had stopped taking her own medications. Kay K had been skipping school to hang out with an older cousin, doing so more often as she got older. Marlena was called into truancy court by a letter that threatened jail or a $10,000 fine. She told the judge that she couldn't control Kay K. That her sister now lived with their mom, who wasn't making her get help. Child welfare workers removed Kay K from home. Soon, she ran away. No one knew where she was for almost a year. She had gone to Louisiana. In a phone call to Marlena that didn't include enough information to find her, Kay K described being held in a man's basement, in a room full of children's games. She suspects the man had been a pedophile, but Kay K would not talk about it. Teens who've spent time in foster care experience higher rates of human trafficking and sexual abuse. Often, they're targeted because of weak social connections and unmet basic needs. Offering care, food and shelter can entice vulnerable young people into dangerous situations. One day, somebody bought Kay K a bus ticket home. She was pregnant. Kinship caregivers keep family together but don't get help they need A Mississippi couple took in a relative's kids to keep them out of the foster care system. They say parents like them deserve more support. A sister's love Kay K graduated high school, worked at Waffle House and began college but never finished. A cycle had started. Sober, Kay K was a witty comedian who liked to have fun. She was kind-hearted and generous, willing to give up her possessions if she thought others needed them more. But young Kay K started spending more time with cousins who crashed at a party house. Some used drugs and had criminal records. Kay K slipped deeper and deeper into life on the fringe, her sisters said. Amy believes a violent partner shielded Kay K from even worse people. The couple would beat each other in drunken outbursts, but the man also protected Kay K from traffickers and dealers. He controlled her life, where she went, and who she saw. When he was imprisoned for robbery, she was freed to spend time with anyone. By the time she was 30, Kay K was selling sex for cash and drugs. At times, she was held against her will. She jumped out a second story window to escape one man. Whenever the family tried to get her help, she'd skip town. Sometimes the sisters had court papers in hand ordering an involuntary commitment, but they couldn't find her. When the sisters did manage to get her into a psych ward or hospital, doctors would discharge her after a week or two with no support for continued treatment. Marlena said Kay K could not qualify for Medicaid, and no one would treat her without insurance. 'The system failed her,' Amy said. Kay K returned to her hometown and got sober when she was pregnant. Usually, hospital testing showed she was clean. Once, doctors found alcohol, meth and cocaine in her blood. Kay K, at times, fought to raise her nine kids, including in court. Most ended up in the care of her sisters. Even that stress didn't end the sisters' relationship. The women had worked too hard for too long to stay connected. Kay K was the only sister Amy had felt close to. 'No matter how angry I am at you, I'll still be there when you need me,' Amy said. 'We're sisters.' Almost every day, Kay K would talk to one of them. She'd borrow a phone and log into Facebook Messenger to call or type a short note. I love you! Love you! How the kids doin? Silence One day, the notes stopped coming. A friend of the extended family told Marlena, You should check on your sister. He said she was being held at an abandoned house. He said a man was selling sex with her to pay for his drug supply. Sisters reported it to police in November but heard nothing back. They took turns staking out the house to catch a glimpse of Kay K or her captor. In January, Marlena told a local news reporter about her missing 31-year-old sister. She got a call from a police officer that day. Why do I have to find out about this from Facebook? he asked. He didn't know they had filed a missing-person report months ago. When he looked, he told Marlena he couldn't find it. The officer drove to the abandoned house with Marlena but nobody answered the door. Neighbors told them that, yes, they'd seen the man and Kay K in the home. Without a warrant, the cop couldn't enter. Weeks later, police asked the family for DNA swabs, calling it standard procedure for a missing person case. Marlena and Amy, however, were suspicious. What they didn't know is that a man told police he found a rug-wrapped body halfway down the hill from an abandoned motel. An autopsy showed the woman had been pregnant, but no baby was found. One night, Amy had a dream. She was caught in a loop as someone else. Someone who was trapped in a dark hotel room and scared. Someone who was choking. Someone who died again and again. 'No matter which way I escaped, I appeared back in that room.' Amy woke up crying, turned to her husband and spoke. My sister's not here anymore. She just died. She's gone. Chapter 3: Rebuilding | A tragedy means Amy must take in her nieces and nephews. She and her sisters fight to give them a better childhood than they had. This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism's 2025 Child Welfare Impact Reporting Fund. Jayme Fraser is an investigative data reporter at USA TODAY. She can be reached on Signal or WhatsApp at (541) 362-1393 or by emailing jfraser@
