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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