In 2022, states received $189 billion in funding for primary and secondary schools. The funding was supposed to go to programs that would allow kids to make up for the lost learning they were forced to experience during the pandemic.
Standardized test scores had fallen to levels not seen in forty years or more. The infusion of cash would, as the Biden administration promised, help kids catch up.
The most closely watched standardized test for primary and secondary school children is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It's called "The Nation's Report Card" because more students take this test than any other standardized test.
Nearly $200 billion spent to help kids catch up to pre-pandemic levels of competency in reading and math has been wasted. That's the conclusion we can reach by looking at this year's NAEP results.
"The percentage of eighth graders who have 'below basic' reading skills according to NAEP was the largest it has been in the exam’s three-decade history — 33 percent," reports the New York Times. "The percentage of fourth graders at “below basic” was the largest in 20 years, at 40 percent."
Math scores were a little better but still below the levels achieved before the pandemic.
Who do we blame for this miserable failure? I'd like to blame teachers, but that's far too simple. The entire educational structure of teaching and learning has been enslaved by woke ideology, and it's creating a generation of imbeciles who can't read, can't write, and, worst of all, can't think.
“Our lowest performing students are reading at historically low levels,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which gives the NAEP exam. “We need to stay focused in order to right this ship.”
The NAEP exam is considered more challenging than many state-level standardized tests. Still, the poor scores indicate a lack of skills that are necessary for school and work.
In fourth-grade reading, students who score below the basic level on NAEP cannot sequence events from a story or describe the effects of a character’s actions. In eighth grade, students who score below basic cannot determine the main idea of a text or identify differing sides of an argument.
Dr. Carr did point to Louisiana fourth graders as a rare bright spot. Though their overall reading achievement was in line with the national average, a broad swath of students had matched or exceeded prepandemic achievement levels.
What are they doing in Louisiana that's different than many other public school districts? The state has focused on "the science of reading."
The Times reports, "The resulting instruction typically includes a strong focus on structured phonics and vocabulary building." It's surprising because, as everyone knows, phonics is racist, and improving vocabulary is not the job of teachers.
Experts have no clear explanation for the dismal reading results. While school closures and other stresses associated with the Covid-19 pandemic deepened learning loss, reading scores began declining several years before the virus emerged.
In a new paper, Nat Malkus, an education researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, points out that declines in American children’s performance are echoed in tests of adults’ skills over the same time period. So while we often look to classrooms to understand why students are not learning more, some of the causes may be attributed to screen time, cellphones and social media, he argues.
This is a similar argument made by social scientist Jonathan Haidt, who advocates keeping smartphones out of kids' hands until they're 16. There are just too many distractions for the young minds of children to deal with when they're trying to learn.
However, screen time and cell phones don't affect third and fourth-graders. This is a problem with teaching and the resistance to changing the curricula and the way that children are taught.
I doubt whether union teachers will want to change even if it can be shown that kids would benefit from it.
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