The cost of school closing is one-third of a year’s learning

What the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NACE) Has Learned about the Dropping of Math and Reading Performances in 9-Year-Old Schools During the Pandemic

There is an academic regression. Since the National Assessment of Educational Progress was first administered in the 1970s, scores have usually risen or held steady. But two decades’ worth of math and reading gains were more or less erased for 9-year-olds during the pandemic. Long-term consequences will come from declining academic skills. Researchers calculated that the decline in math skills alone will lead to $900 billion in lower future earnings over the course of students’ lifetimes.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is also known as the Nation’s Report Card and was conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, is the basis of the alarming findings.

The results of today’s Nation’s Report Card are appalling and unacceptable according to the Secretary of Education.

Lower, middle and high performing students have seen their math scores decline, as have scores for most racial and ethnic groups. The fourth grade math scores for all ethnic and racial groups went down.

Carr told reporters before the report’s release that eight grade was the key to more advanced mathematical course taking. This is what these students do not have. They’re missing these important skills that will prepare them eventually for (science, technology, engineering and math) level careers.”

The average math score for the fourth and eighth grades was below what was recorded in the previous year. The reading score of the fourth grade fell by 3 points, and the 8th grade reading score dropped by 2 points.

Surging inequality. As Robin Lake and Travis Pillow write in a Brookings Institution article, “American students are experiencing a K-shaped recovery, in which gaps between the highest- and lowest-scoring students, already growing before the pandemic, are widening into chasms.”

“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 what we need to be talking about from this report.

The dynamics of schools during the Pandemic, when many schools were closed and replaced by online and in- person classes, are to be blamed for the declines.

“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.

Remote learning and rising absenteeism in the United States during the 2021-2022 Pandemic: The need to rethink schooling for children to make this up

“And let’s not forget that remote learning looks very differently all across the United States. It is extremely complex, with all the factors associated with implementing remote learning.

It is necessary to understand the role that the Pandemic played in the declines, along with other factors.

“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. The future is bright for the kids as they are getting more familiar with the cyberspace and technological context.

The students that were affected by the Pandemic are going to receive less assistance when we try to get our way out, according to a researcher at the JohnHopkins University School of Education.

The need for policy initiatives to help children recover lost learning and skills is urgent. “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 schooling and make substantial changes to the structure and way that we do education to make this up.”

Rising absenteeism. During the pandemic, students got in the habit of not going to school. Those habits have not stopped. There were 16 million students who were chronically absent in the 21-month period from 2021-22. In New York City, 42% of public school students were chronically absent that year.

What do parents think about Covid and what does it tell us about vaccines? An opinion columnist on long covid and reinfections

The parents are aware of these new realities and are starting to adapt their thinking. Democrats have been trusted more by voters on education. By 2022 Nat Malkus stated that Republicans were as trusted as Democrats by voters.

But this is not happening. Biden did not give a lot of ideas to fix America’s ailing schools. The Republican Party cannot talk about school reform without mentioning the word “C.R.T.” and that’s what we’re seeing here.

What is it that is concerned about things like long covid and reinfections? The lack of adequate research, as well as confusion about the condition, make it difficult to answer that question, wrote the Opinion columnist. There are suggestions for how to approach the problem. Regarding another ongoing Covid danger, that of reinfections, a virologist sets the record straight: “There has yet to be a variant that negates the benefits of vaccines.”

How will the virus change? A group of scientists who study viruses says, “There’s no reason, at least biologically, that the virus won’t continue to evolve.”David Quammen surveys some of the highly effective tools and techniques available for studying Co

What could endemic Covid look like? David Wallace Wells writes that by one estimate, 100,000 Americans could die each year from the coronavirus. Stopping that will require a creative effort to increase and sustain high levels of vaccination. The immunobiologist Akiko Iwasaki suggests that new vaccines may be part of the answer.