Is Our Children Learning? Examining the State of Education and the Impact of the Pandemic
The question of whether our children are learning is a perennial concern, often amplified by anxieties about the future. While some fears may be overblown, recent data paints a concerning picture of the state of education, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article delves into the challenges facing students, the impact of the pandemic on learning, and the broader questions surrounding the value and effectiveness of education.
The Pandemic's Impact on Student Learning
More than four years after the pandemic shuttered classrooms, students of all ages still haven’t made up the ground they lost. The shift to remote learning, coupled with the stress and disruption of a global health crisis, dealt a significant blow to students' academic progress. The effects were seen almost immediately, as students’ performance in reading and math began to dip far below pre-pandemic norms, worrying educators and families around the country.
A report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at Arizona State University reveals that the average American student is "less than halfway to a full academic recovery" from the pandemic's effects. The report combines test scores, academic research, and parent interviews to provide a comprehensive analysis of the challenges facing public schools.
Key findings from the CRPE report include:
- In spring 2023, just 56 percent of American fourth-graders were performing on grade level in math, down from 69 percent in 2019.
- Declines in reading were less stark but still concerning, with 65 percent of third-graders performing on grade level, compared with 72 percent in 2019.
- Recovery in reading has been slower, with some researchers finding essentially no rebound since students returned to the classroom.
These findings are consistent with what many teachers are observing in their classrooms, with some expressing concern about students' ability to write a sentence or maintain focus. Focus and endurance for any sort of task, especially reading, has been really hard for a lot of teenagers since coming back from pandemic closures. Even the youngest children, who were not yet in school when lockdowns began, are showing troubling signs of academic and behavioral delays with 4- and 5-year-olds who are throwing chairs, biting, hitting.
If schools and districts can’t reverse these trends, Covid could leave “an indelible mark” on a generation of kids, CRPE director Robin Lake said this week. The effects are greatest for low-income students, students with disabilities, and children learning English as a second language, who faced educational inequities prior to the pandemic that have only worsened today. Covid “shined a light on the resource inequities and opportunity gaps that existed in this country, and then it exacerbated them,” said Allison Socol, vice president for P-12 policy, research, and practice at EdTrust, a nonprofit devoted to educational equity.
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Continued Challenges in Academic Recovery
Earlier this year, the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a nationwide testing company, reported that rather than making up ground since the pandemic, students were falling further behind. In 2023-24, the gap between pre- and post-Covid test score averages widened by an average of 36 percent in reading and 18 percent in math, according to the NWEA report.
When it comes to education, the effect of the pandemic “is not over,” Lake said. “It’s not a thing of the past.” Kids are behind in reading and math, and they’re not catching up Nearly all public schools in America closed by the end of March 2020, and while some reopened that fall, others did not fully resume in-person learning until fall 2021.
Scores on one set of national tests, released in September 2022, dropped to historic lows, reversing two decades of progress in reading and math, the New York Times reported. Still, experts were optimistic that students could make up the ground they’d lost. NWEA’s MAP tests, which measure academic growth, showed a strong rebound in the 2021-22 school year, said Karyn Lewis, vice president of research and policy partnerships at NWEA. But growth slowed the following year, and now lags behind pre-pandemic trends. Kids “are learning throughout the year, but they are doing so at a slightly sluggish pace,” Lewis said - not enough to make up for their Covid-era losses.
A team of researchers using separate data from state tests appeared to find more hopeful results earlier this year, documenting significant recovery in both reading and math between 2022 and 2023. But after reanalyzing their data, they found that the improvements in reading were probably produced by changes in state tests, not actual improvements in student achievement, said Thomas Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard and one of the leaders of the research team. In fact, though students did gain some ground in math, they showed little recovery in reading between 2022 and 2023.
More recent data does not paint a rosier picture. About half of states have released test results for the 2023-24 school year, and “I don’t see a lot of states with substantial increases” in scores, Kane said.
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Many factors probably contribute to students’ slow recovery, experts say. Some may have missed “foundational pieces” of reading and math in 2020 and 2021, Lewis said. Learning loss can be like a “compounding debt,” she explained, with skills missed in early grades causing bigger and bigger problems as kids get older.
International Comparisons and the State of STEM Education
The United States' performance in education is often compared to that of other countries. While some data suggests a mixed bag, with the U.S. not consistently ranking at the top, it's important to consider the complexities of comparing different education systems.
Adults believe the country is either average or below average at teaching students science, technology, engineering and math, according to a Pew Research Center survey released in April.
But the results of a test measuring students' reading, math and science skills from about 80 countries show more of a mixed bag. and seven countries had higher science scores. since 1979, Carnoy said. was near the bottom in most of them.
A different report published by the National Center for Education Statistics in 1993 analyzed two decades of National Assessment of Educational Progress results. don’t show significant declines since 1979. for the 1979-80 school year was 71.5%, far below the 87% reported for the 2021-22 school year. doesn’t have only one education system - instead, each state has its own, Carnoy said. “Student performance in some states has increased greatly in the past 30 years, and not so much in other states,” he said. Carter signed the bill that created the Department of Education on Oct. had a Department of Education, though. K-12 STEM education isn’t above average, but test results paint a mixed picture
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The Value of Education and the Learning Crisis in Developing Countries
The discussion around education extends beyond test scores and rankings. It raises fundamental questions about the value of schooling and the factors that contribute to successful learning, particularly in developing countries.
So, really, we just don’t know what you get from education in a developing country. We don’t know how much more you are likely to earn if you stick through high school. We don’t know if you’ll even make any more money. If you do make more money from going to more school, we don’t really know why. It could be that you just came from a family that was always going to use their connections for you. Or it could be because you’ve learned to read and write. Or it could be because you’ve learned to manage your own time and cooperate with others. All are plausible, but we don’t know which one is true - or if all of them are a little bit true. We can’t know if we’re succeeding unless we understand what success means.
One perspective suggests that the primary benefit of schooling may not be the accumulation of knowledge, which is often forgotten, but rather the development of cognitive endurance and skills that are valuable in the workforce. It's quite likely imo that the primary intellectual benefit of school is not knowledge (easily forgotten) but the learned cognitive endurance that makes it easier to do cognitively demanding jobs later in life. Those jobs are also better paid, and they have larger benefits to society in terms of helping a country grow.
The Role of AI and Innovation in Education
Emerging technologies, such as Large Language Models (LLMs), offer potential solutions for addressing challenges in education. There's definite possibility here - even potentially in marking and monitoring lessons. How much to "Automate" learning in general is. To put it crudely, many LMIC primary school education systems are based on rote learning. So one big question (and debate) in education circles is, should we then make that rote learning as effective as possible? So we will start the year thinking about benchmarks for AI in education. lots of charity ideas here, and something we’re fortunate to get funding from BMGF and others to explore. For example, LLMs could be used to translate primary school books into local languages or to develop lesson plans. They also potentially can be used in marking and monitoring lessons.
George W. Bushisms
George W. Bushisms are unconventional statements, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms, and semantic or linguistic errors made in the public speaking of George W. Bush's use of the English language in formal and public speeches has spawned several books that document the statements. Linguist Mark Liberman of Language Log has suggested that Bush is not unusually error-prone in his speech, saying: "You can make any public figure sound like a boob, if you record everything he says and set hundreds of hostile observers to combing the transcripts for disfluencies, malapropisms, word formation errors and examples of non-standard pronunciation or usage…
Stanford University lecturer and former Bush advisor Keith Hennessey has also argued that the number of Bush's verbal gaffes is not unusual given the significant amount of time that he has spoken in public, and that his successor Barack Obama's gaffes were not as scrutinized. I used to have the job of tutoring a dyslexic child, and I know something about the symptoms. So I kicked myself hard when I read the profile of Governor George W. Bush, by my friend and colleague Gail Sheehy, in this month's Vanity Fair. We've been unknowingly teasing the afflicted. The poor guy is obviously dyslexic, and dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy. I know from my teaching experience that nature very often compensates the dyslexic with a higher IQ or some grant of intuitive intelligence.
Examples of Bushisms:
- "I'm not sure 80% of people get the death tax."
- "Too many good docs are getting out of the business."
- "Tribal sovereignty means that: It's sovereign. It's- you're a… you're a… you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed… as a sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the Federal government and…"
- "I'm the commander, see. I don't need to explain-I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President."
- "Yesterday, you made note of my-the lack of my talent when it came to dancing. But nevertheless, I want you to know I danced with joy."
- "This is still a dangerous world."
- "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we."
- "I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world."
- "Well, I mean that a defeat in Iraq will embolden the enemy and will provide the enemy-more opportunity to train, plan, to attack us. That's what I mean."
- "We must stop the terror. I call upon all nations, to do everything they can, to stop these terrorist killers."
- "The decision of one man [Vladimir Putin], to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine. Iraq too. Anyway…[I'm] 75."
- "When you think about it, in the first month of the new year there will be an election in the Palestinian territory and there will be an election in Iraq."
- "You bet I cut the taxes at the top. That encourages entrepreneurship. What we Republicans should stand for is growth in the economy."
- "You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it?
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