Disturbing Trends: Alarming Academic Declines Affecting Students of All Backgrounds

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The facts:

More than half of students in poverty as well as Black, Hispanic, and Native American students in grade 8 performed below the basic level in 2022, along with more than a quarter of white students. In 4th grade, more than 40 percent of Black and Native American students, more than a third of Hispanic students, and 14 percent of white students performed at that lowest level in math.

Results for students who took the test in spring 2022—the first main National Assessment of Educational Progress administration for these grades since the pandemic began—show the biggest drop in math performance in 4th and 8th grades since the testing program began in 1990. In reading , 4th and 8th graders likewise are performing on par with students in the 1990s, and about a third of students in both grades can’t read at even the “basic” achievement level—the lowest level on the test.

Academic declines on NAEP were sweeping, spanning low-income and wealthier students, boys and girls, and most racial or ethnic groups in both subjects and grades.

Here are the facts:

1. There’s bad news for (nearly) everybody.
Nobody improved in math in 2022: Students in grades 4 and 8, low-income and wealthier students, boys and girls, students in every racial or ethnic group, and students with and without disabilities, in every region of the country, all stayed flat or fell back.
Asian, Black, Hispanic, and white students all saw drops in average scores in 4th and 8th grades since 2019. Native American students lost some of their progress in 4th grade but held flat in 8th.

2. This shouldn’t be a surprise.
The results of the main NAEP come on the heels of similarly grim results from other major tests, detailing the ongoing fallout of pandemic disruptions to schooling and more than a decade of faltering academic progress.
Last month, NAEP’s long-term trend study, which uses a pool of mostly the same questions to compare the achievement of 9-year-olds over time, showed the first decline in math in the test’s 50-year history. And independent, large-scale testing groups such as NWEA and Amplify have been sounding the alarm about learning loss—particularly in math—during the pandemic.

The 4th and 8th graders participating in NAEP in 2022 would have been in 2nd and 6th grades, respectively, when the pandemic began and schools faced extended and widespread closures.

“Let’s be very clear here: The data prior to the pandemic did not reflect an education system that was on the right track. The pandemic simply made it worse. It took poor performance and dropped it down even further,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

3. There are more students now with severe needs in math.
Only 37 percent of 4th graders and 27 percent of 8th graders are proficient in math—meaning they are considered capable of handling challenging academic work—representing significant declines in both the number of proficient and advanced students in both grades. The share of advanced-level students fell from 9 percent to 8 percent in 4th grade and from 10 percent to 7 percent in 8th grade.
By contrast, 38 percent of 8th graders and a quarter of 4th graders cannot meet NAEP’s lowest benchmark—the basic level.

4. Teachers are overwhelmed.
While fewer teachers reported classroom supplies are a problem in 2022, more teachers problems with too many teaching hours and not enough workspace, teachers reported as part of NAEP’s background survey. For example, 27 percent of 4th graders and 29 percent of 8th graders now have teachers who say their work hours have become a “moderate” or “serious” problem. That’s a higher share in both grades than before the pandemic.

While a majority of students still have educators who are satisfied with being a teacher, teachers were generally less satisfied and inspired by the profession in both grades than in 2019. That may be both a cause and a symptom of widespread teacher shortages, in which math is the subject with the greatest need for staff.

5. It’s going to take a lot of time and money to fix this.
The federal government has already dedicated $190 billion through ESSER and the American Recovery Plan to help schools address lost student learning during the pandemic.

Recent research suggests that’s not nearly enough money, for a long enough time frame. One study published in the journal Education Researcher earlier this month estimated schools will need $500 billion in additional funding—and targeted more specifically to high-need students—to fully recover.