New NAEP Scores Show Drops in Reading and Math

Colleen HroncichPandemic schooling didn ’t work for a lot of kids. While this is widely acknowledged, it helps to have data to back up the assumption. And now we have it, for 9-year-olds at least.Scores were released today for theNational Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is often called the nation ’s report card. This data comes from a special long-term trend assessment of 9-year-old students conducted this past January to March. Peggy Carr, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES),noted today ’s release is “the first nationally representative report comparing student achievement from before the pandemic to now.”Unfortunately, the predictions about how kids were faring educationally were correct. Average scores fell 5 points in reading and 7 points in mathematics compared to 2020. This is the largest drop in reading since 1990, and the first ever statistically significant decline in mathematics.NAEP scores are broken out in a number of ways to help get a better picture of how students are doing beyond average scores. Black students showed a larger score decrease (13 points) compared to white students (5 points), resulting in a widening of the racial score gap from 25 points in 2020 to 33 points in 2022. Hispanics were in between with an 8-point drop. In reading, all three groups experienced a 6-point score decrease.Looking at students by performance percentiles shows declines at every level; but in both math and reading, sc...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs