Elementary school students’ math and reading scores plummeted to the lowest level in decades amid the school shutdowns implemented in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, national test results released Thursday show.
In math, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which has dubbed itself the “nation’s report card,” reported a first ever score drop among nine-year-olds since it was first administered in 1973. Their reading scores dropped by the largest margin since 1990, the New York Times reported, indicating a serious setback for literacy acquisition. The assessment also measured the window between 2020, when Covid-19 erupted, and 2022. Average scores for nine-year-old students in 2022 declined five points in reading and seven points in mathematics compared to 2020.
The learning loss was experienced by kids across race and income level, but it was particularly severe among low-performing and minority students, a well-documented disparity that widened during the two years of remote school. Students in the 90th percentile of scores lost three points in math, but students in the bottom 10th percentile lost 12 points in math.
Black students lost 13 points in math compared with five points among white students. As a consequence, the White−Black score gap from 25 points in 2020 was expanded to 33 points in 2022.
A May study conducted by Harvard University found that school closures and remote learning disproportionately harmed the academic performance of minority and low-income students, exacerbating the existing gap separating low-income and minority students from their white and wealthier counterparts.
While the study does not draw causation between virtual learning and learning loss, it acknowledges that students with greater access to resources while attending school from home fared better academically during the pandemic.
The disruption of remote learning posed a disadvantage to all students regardless of socio-economic means, many researchers widely agree, but students with high-quality education technology at their disposal were more likely to overcome it than those who lacked it.
“Of the 70 percent of 9-year-olds who learned remotely during the 2020–21 school year, higher performers (those at or above the 75th percentile) had greater access to a desktop computer, laptop, or tablet all the time; a quiet place to work available some of the time; and a teacher available to help them with mathematics or reading schoolwork every day or almost every day compared to lower performers (those below the 25th percentile),” the report notes.