The good news: In math, many students have made up at least some of the academic ground they lost during the pandemic. The bad news: In both reading and math, most fourth- and eighth-graders in still performed below pre-pandemic levels. What's more, while these achievement declines were exacerbated by the pandemic, they appear to have begun even before COVID, raising important questions about why students are still struggling and what educators and policymakers can do about it.
Previous research suggests that money did lead to modest academic gains, though this new data shows students still have a long way to go. NAEP tests were first administered in Today, the assessments in math and reading are given every two years to a broad sample of students in fourth and eighth grades.
In fourth grade, the average math score ticked up slightly compared with , ending a pandemic slide. In fact, white, Black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students all showed modest gains, on average. That said, fourth-grade math scores still remained below pre-pandemic levels, with one exception: Alabama was the only state where fourth-graders' average math scores surpassed scores. In , lawmakers there passed a law aimed at improving math proficiency for all K-5 students in the state.
A longer view of fourth-graders' math scores β and student achievement more broadly β shows those scores began stagnating and even declining before the pandemic. Math scores peaked around Multiple education researchers tell NPR they aren't sure why. One thing we know is that fourth-grade math performance improved around the same time the old federal education law known as No Child Left Behind signed in enforced strict new accountability requirements. When those requirements were phased out beginning in and ultimately replaced in , math performance, especially among lower-performers, fell.
That's just one possible explanation for the slowdown that the pandemic worsened. Goldhaber suggests learning could also have been set back by the Great Recession, by kids' increased access to smartphones and tablets or by the ripple effects of a decline in kids reading for fun.
