The test results have been seized as political fodder – just before the Midterms – to re-litigate the debate over how long schools should have stayed closed, an issue that galvanized many parents and teachers during the most intense periods of the pandemic.
My reference is to an authoritative national exam released last Monday, offering the most definitive indictment yet of the pandemic’s impact on millions of schoolchildren.
US students in most states and across almost ALL demographic groups have experienced troubling setbacks in BOTH math and reading; in math, the results were especially devastating, representing the steepest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, which tests a broad sampling of fourth and eighth graders and dates to the early 1990s.
In the test’s first results since the pandemic began, math scores for eighth graders fell in nearly every state. A meager 26% of eighth graders were proficient, down from 34% in 2019.
Fourth graders fared only slightly better, with declines in 41 states; just 36% of fourth graders were proficient in math, down from 41%.
The curriculum has been dumbed down, many districts are overwhelmed with students who speak little English and the only people held ‘accountable’ are teachers – NEVER students or their often over-bearing and clueless parents.
Cellphones are allowed in far too many classes.
The profession of teaching has been so de-valued that it’s increasingly difficult to attract anyone to the field, let alone the ‘best and brightest.’
Sadly, every little is expected of public-school students – like just showing up to school.
For more than a generation, America has been content in raising multitudes of intellectual lightweights.
Reading scores also declined in more than half the states, continuing a downward spiral that had begun even before the pandemic.
NO state showed sizable improvement in reading; and only about one in three students met proficiency standards.
When there’s an interest in education by the parents, there’s an interest within the heart and soul of their offspring!
NO rigor, NO discipline and the constant “dumbing down of standards” based upon a ‘cancel culture’ plus, a race-driven curriculum…don’t act surprised!!!!!!!!!!
Lobster on the Prairie 