29-01-2025
Academic trends in Nation's Report Card show improvement in some subjects
(CBS DETROIT) - Detroit Public Schools Community District shared some promising student academic results through scores in the latest national student report card.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress report issued Wednesday included 2024's grade 4 math and reading average scores, along with grade 8 math and reading average scores, from across the country, including a sampling of Michigan students.
The trends, now that four years have passed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, are that recovery is mostly has been seen in math and "largely driven by higher-performing students," National Center for Education Studies Commissioner Peggy G. Carr said in the press release.
"Overall, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance," she said. "Lower-performing students are struggling, especially in reading."
The Nation's Report Card is different from state-specific testing schedules and requirements such as Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, or M-STEP. The national tests are handled every two years by the Institute of Education Sciences, a division of the U.S. Department of Education; and its testing data goes back to 2003.
The data then is reported by state and in some cases, by district.
One of the issues lingering in student learning across the country is absenteeism. The Nation's Report Card explained that while absentee rates have backed off from 2022, they are not to pre-pandemic levels.
Locally, DPSCD related the following details:
Detroit saw a 2 point decline in fourth-grade reading scores from 2022 to 2024, a detail that is "not statistically significant" especially in comparison to other districts. "4th grade students unfortunately experienced significant learning loss during critical years of literacy foundation development due to pandemic online learning," district officials said.
Detroit saw a 6 point improvement in 4th grade math scores from 2022 to 2024, which outpaced the improvement shown by national public, large city districts, and state averages.
Detroit saw a 2.4-point improvement in 8th grade reading, while the national public, large city districts, and the state averages declined.
Detroit saw a decline of 1.1 points in 8th grade math from 2022 to 2024, while national public, large urban school district, and state averages declined as well.
"Our 8th grade reading and 4th grade math 2024 NAEP results reflect the improvement that we are seeing on all state assessment results over the last two years since the pandemic. We are now in the conversation as an improving large urban school district, but we still have plenty of work to do," Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said.
