Good news in mathematics, bad news in reading. What you need to know about the latest NAEP results: NPR

A student at the Longwood Middle School in Middle Island, NY, does a math test.

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Almost five years have passed since Covid-19 has first disturbed the American schools, and new data that is known as the country’s reporting map offers reason for hope and concerns.

The good news: In mathematics, many students invented at least part of the academic property that they lost during pandemic.

The bad news: Most of the fourth and eighth graders were still carried out in 2024 both in reading and in mathematics below Pre-Pandemie 2019 Level.

In addition, these achievements seem to have started through the pandemic before Covid-19, while pandemic stricter to raise important questions, why the students still have to struggle and which educators and political decision-makers can do about it.

The news comes when the country’s public schools largely spent $ 190 billion for the federal financing received from the Congress for the payment of interventions, including summer school and tutoring. Earlier studies indicate that money led to modest academic profits, even though they show new data that the students still have a long way to go.

The national assessment of educational progress (NAEP), which contains data for the state’s testimony, is prescribed by the congress and is the largest national test of student learning. Naep tests were first carried out in 1969. Today the assessments in mathematics and read to a broad sample of students in the fourth and eighth grade are awarded every two years.

The students kept stable in mathematics or even invented soil

In the fourth grade, the average mathematical value ticked slightly compared to 2022 and ended a pandemic. In fact, white, black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students showed modest profits on average.

“In fourth grade it seems that the students improved independently,” says Lisa Ashe, a mathematics consultant by the Ministry of Public Education in North Carolina and member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which defines the NAEP guidelines.

Nevertheless, the fourth grade mathematics values ​​still remained below Pre-Pandemic 2019 Level, with one exception: Alabama was the only state in which the average mathematics values ​​of the fourth graders exceeded the results of 2019. (In 2022, the legislators passed a law there to improve math knowledge for all K-5 students of the state.)

But Covid-19 is not just to blame. A longer view of the mathematics values ​​of the fourth grader and the performance of the students in the further sense that these points began to stagnate and even lose weight before The pandemic. The mathematics values ​​culminated in 2013. Several educational researchers say NPR that they are not sure why.

“This is the multitrillion dollar question,” says Dan Goldhaber, educational researcher at the University of Washington, who studied Pandemic Learning District.

One thing we know is that the mathematical performance in fourth grade has improved approximately at the same time as the old federal education law, which was left behind as no released child (signed), forced new demands on accountability. If these requirements were switched off (from 2012) and ultimately replaced (in 2015), the mathematical performance, especially at lower performs, fell.

This is just a possible explanation for the slowdown that deteriorated the pandemic. Goldhaber suggests that learning could also have been withdrawn from the great recession, the increased access of children to smartphones and tablets or by the ripple effects of a decline in reading children for fun. (Since 2017, fewer and fewer students have reported Naep that they would be happy to read.)

“It is important to understand what this earlier stagnation caused if we get out of the swamp of pandemic,” says Goldhaber.

For eighth graders, the mathematics values ​​remained constant in 2024 compared to 2022. As with the fourth graders, however, they remained below the levels of the pre-Pandeman 2019.

In addition, the country’s message cards underlines some worrying divergence in these results. The highest eighth graders improved In mathematics compared to 2022, but the students of the lowest performance moved in the opposite direction and lost the soil in 2024.

“This actually caused the alarm,” says Ashe about the expansion of the performance gap. “We have to meet the needs of these students who are in the lower percentile, because something we do does not work for these students.”

A total of 39% of the fourth graders and 28% of the eighth graders achieved after or via NAEP standard for math knowledge. This is a little better than in 2022.

The NAEP report warns against comparing these results with state-related figures, since “the NAEP standard for competence represents the competence for challenging objects, a standard that exceeds the standards of most states for competent or classic services”.

Read: The bad news got worse

The results when reading were not nearly as hopeful as in math:

The fourth grader continued to lose ground in 2024, whereby the reading values ​​were slightly lower on average than in 2022 and much lower than in 2019.

In 2019, 35% of fourth graders achieved or above the test standard of the test.

This number dropped to 33% and also 31% in 2024 in 2022.

As with mathematics, these declines are not entirely the fault of the pandemic. Fourth grade reading values ​​began years earlier to fall in 2015.

Only one state, Louisiana, recorded the reading results of the fourth grade 2024 about the score of 2019.

It is worth remembering: This current round of fourth graders from the school year 2023 to 2024 was in kindergarten when pandemic closed the first schools, and many spent some or all learning in the first class from afar.

The reading values ​​of the eighth graders 2024 also decreased compared to 2022, whereby only 30% of the students appeared after or above the competent standard of NAEP.

NAEP classifies students at one of three qualification levels: advanced, competent or lowest, fundamental. Read the proportion of eighth graders according to the results below The basic standard of Naep “was the greatest in the history of the evaluation”.

Not only that, but the worst readers in 2024, “lower than our lower artists 30 years ago for fourth place And eighth class. These results have dropped as low in the past, ”says Peggy Carr, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

No state improved its eighth grade reading values ​​compared to 2022, let alone 2019.

The connection between poverty and performance

This year’s NAEP results include a new, more precise index for the determination of the socio -economic status of the pupils (SES), and the results show what teachers and researchers have understood for a long time: This poverty and performance are deeply connected.

For example, the overwhelming majority (77%) of the fourth grade students in the highest children’s highest category themselves above the national average in reading.

Of the fourth graders in the lowest SE category, the results are almost turned over, with only 34% above the national average.

The results in mathematical performance were similarly different.

It should be noted positively that many urban areas of their economically disadvantaged students made important profits in mathematics in fourth grade, but a handful of districts did this unusual Now, including the Charlotte Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina, the Guilford County Schools (also in North Carolina), the public schools of Baltimore City and the San Diego Unified School District.

The missing school sets up learning in the way of learning

When the students accepted the latest NAEP reviews in early 2024, they were asked how many days they were not available in the previous month. The results are slightly encouraging: a smaller percentage of fourth and eighth graders who were missing five or more school days compared to 2022 last month.

All along the way, the students with lower services in the previous month with greater probability reported five or more school days compared to students with higher performance.

Simply put, missing school means lack of learning.

When students miss 10% or more of one school year, they are considered “chronically absent” and as NPR previously reported, the rates of chronic absenteeism during the pandemic have doubled.

The link, which NAEP shows between the lack of school and lower academic achievements, surprises Hedy Chang, head of those present, an organization that is devoted to combating chronic absenteeism. “It not only affects academics,” she says of absenteeism. “It affects the social development and how the managers work.”

In order to continue the path of improving the number of visitors and as part of the student performance, Chang suggests that the districts miss the students who miss most school and the hurdles with which they are confronted.

“You may not be able to take everything, do everything at the same time,” says Chang. “You may have to tackle it in parts and pieces through barriers or by classes or through this sub -group in schools.”

She says that you make sure that you are ensured all The students go to school could make a major contribution to strengthening student performance.