Quote of the Day – PLUS – New NAEP results show the negative impacts of the Pandemic

“These are some of the largest declines we have observed in a single assessment cycle in 50 years. Students in 2022 are performing at a level last seen two decades ago.”

Daniel McGrath, acting associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics at the US Department of Education. Quoted by Lauren Camera in US News and World Report article “New Federal Achievement Data Shows Grim Trajectory for Country's 9-Year-Olds”

The PLUS

This week’s release of results from a special administration of the Long Term Trend version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) provides the first looks since COVID hit schools of a valid random sample of students’ reading and math performance from all across the nation.

Unlike standard Long Term Trend NAEP administrations, which normally include testing of students in three separate groups, Age 9, 13 and 17, this special administration only looked at results for Age 9 students, who nominally are mostly in the fourth grade. McGrath’s comments certainly aren’t encouraging.

The “take” by others has also been one of discouragement.

Former Governor Jeb Bush, who has a long history with public education, said:

“Today’s NAEP results are deeply discouraging. In just two years, two decades worth of gains in literacy and mathematics have been wiped away. And, sadly, losses are greatest for

our lowest performing students who now face monumental challenges to recover lost learning.”

Opined Patricia Levesque, CEO of the Foundation for Excellence in Education and Executive Director of ExcelinEd in Action, a national advocacy organization:

“School closures, forced remote learning and pandemic-related disruptions have had serious consequences on our nation’s students. Today’s NAEP results are heartbreaking. Policymakers must act quickly to enact comprehensive, student-centered policies to transform education.

We encourage policymakers to continue to hold schools accountable, expand options for families, embrace innovative solutions and immediately leverage evidence-based Science of Reading policies to close learning gaps and create better long-term outcomes for students.”

According to Education Week, Peggy G. Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP, called the score drops “sobering.”

Education Week also asks the following question and then provides an answer:

“Is an average loss of less than 10 points in each case really that big of a deal on a scale of hundreds Researchers, both at NCES and outside of the agency, emphatically say yes.”

EdWeek additionally points out that:

“Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford University, said that a 13-point decline—the amount that Black students lost in math—can be thought of as about equivalent to a year of schooling.

‘That doesn’t mean that kids forgot a year’s worth of things, because these are different kids,’ he said. Instead, it means that 9-year-old Black students in 2022 are about a year behind where 9-year-old Black students were in 2020.”

Using Reardon’s rule of thumb, overall students across the country now lag about a half a year behind in reading and more than half a year behind in math.

Even local Louisville area reporter Lindsay Allen from WDRB.com summarized the results this way:

“New data released by the National Assessment of Education Progress, also know (sic) as the nation's report card, shows that the results may be even worse than predicted.

In the first national sample of students comparing achievement from before the pandemic to now, 9 years old across the country showed major declines between 2020 and early 2022.”

I’ll add just a bit more. According to information I downloaded from the Long Term Trend NAEP Data Explorer, the Standard Deviation in the test scores from the 2022 Age 9 Long Term Trend NAEP Math Assessment was 41 points. Thus, the 7-point score decline represents a drop of 0.17 Standard Deviation. According to a conversion used by the CREDO group at Stanford University (See Figure 9 in this report for an example of the conversion scale), a difference of 0.1 Standard Deviation is equivalent to 72 days of learning. So, the 7-point drop would be about a learning lag of 122 days of learning, or about seven tenths of a full academic year (based on a full year of 180 days) for math.

For reading, the Long Term Trend Data Explorer shows the Standard Deviation in Age 9 scores was 43. So, the drop of 5 points was 0.12 of a Standard Deviation, or about 86 days of learning, which works out to about a half a year behind.

That’s not exactly “devastating,” but it shows distance learning wasn’t nearly as effective for our students.

While Long Term Trend doesn’t have any reporting based on the percentage of students deemed to be proficient, it is just about certain that when Main NAEP results for 2022 testing are released this fall, we are going to see proficiency drops. The Main NAEP and its close cousin, the Trial Urban District Assessment NAEP will also give us the sobering news for Kentucky and Jefferson County, as well.  

Given that overall proficiency in reading in Kentucky was only 35% for all students and just 14% for Black students back in the 2019 Main NAEP and for Jefferson County it was even lower at 30% overall for all students and just 13% for Black students, the state can’t stand any losses.

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