My kid started kindergarten in the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I know from living it that students are still struggling — in our case, with math.
But new reports released this week are attempting to raise the alarm about the extent of the pandemic’s impact on children.
The question is whether anyone is listening.
Arizona State University’s Center on Reinventing Public Education walks us through how severe academic setbacks have been nationwide, particularly among older students who have less time to catch up.
ACT scores are slipping. And scores on the NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card, are the lowest they’ve been in decades.
The average eighth grader is still months behind where they were before the pandemic in reading and math skills, the report notes, and roughly a third or more scored below the test’s lowest performance category in reading and math.
That means, despite all the funding and promises to do something quickly, we still haven’t made up much ground since students returned to school. --->READ MORE HERE
Middle- and high-school students, who have the least time to catch up before they leave the K-12 system, may be suffering the most as schools emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, warns a new report released Wednesday. These students, researchers said, “deserve our urgent attention.”
The report, which relies largely on recent findings from outside research groups and the federal government, warns that on just about every indicator that matters — basic skills, college going, mental health and more — the pandemic has set older students back.
“Time is running out for these kids,” said Robin Lake, director of The Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization at Arizona State University. “Many have already exited the K-12 system, either by graduating or essentially disappearing on us. Too many kids still are missing — we don’t know if they’ve dropped out or where they’ve gone.”
Outside researchers who study these students said the fears are justified. In response, Lake and others are proposing a raft of reforms, including extending “gap years” to any high school graduates who need time to catch up — as well as a new commitment to reforming high school so it works for more students.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona acknowledged the slow pace of academic turnaround, calling it “appalling and unacceptable.”
“It’s like as a country we’ve normalized those gaps,” he said in separate remarks to reporters Tuesday, --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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