PISA tests reveal Latin America’s lag in education 2:08 (CNN) — The math and reading scores of 9-year-olds in the United States fell between 2020 and 2022 to a level not seen in decades, a foreboding sign of the state of American education two years after the covid-19 pandemic began.
The results were part of the long-term trend reading and math tests of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often called the “Nation’s Report Card,” conducted by the Center National Educational Statistics (NCES). The exams were administered to 9-year-olds in early 2020, before the pandemic, and then again in early 2022, the group said. Median scores in 2022 fell 5 points in reading and 7 points in math compared to 2020, the largest decline in reading since 1990 and the first in math, according to the organization. A test known as the “Nation’s Report Card” showed a significant drop in reading and math scores among 9-year-olds. US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona told CNN on Thursday that the drop in scores was related to a lack of in-person education in classrooms during the covid-19 pandemic and said the US is not in the classroom. is in an educational crisis. “It’s very alarming. It’s concerning. But it’s not surprising, considering a year and a half ago more than half of our schools were not open for in-person instruction,” he said. Currently, all schools are open for face-to-face instruction. “Face-to-face learning is where we need to focus. We need to redouble our efforts. I’m very concerned about those results and I know we have the resources now and we need to maintain the same level of urgency that we had two years ago to get our students supported again.” . This is the first national report comparing student achievement from before the pandemic to now, Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said in a statement. “These are some of the largest declines we’ve seen in a single evaluation cycle in 50 years of the NAEP program,” said NCES Acting Associate Commissioner Daniel McGrath. “The students of 2022 are performing at a level last seen two decades ago.” Students who were already behind had a harder time, as their math scores fell by as much as 12 points and their reading scores dropped by as much as 10 points. This would reverse the school delay after the pandemic 1:46 “Disruptions due to covid-19 may have exacerbated many of the challenges we were already facing. We know that students with more difficulties have fallen further behind than their peers “Carr said in a statement. It’s not just the Covid pandemic that has caused learning disruptions, Carr said. “School shootings, violence and classroom disruptions have increased, as have faculty and staff vacancies, absenteeism, cyberbullying and student use of mental health services. This information provides important context for the results we observed in the long-term trend assessment,” she said. Black and Hispanic children’s math scores were lower than white children’s, according to the survey, with a 5-point drop for white students, a 13-point drop for black students and an 8-point drop for Hispanics. Math scores also fell across the country, “eight points in the Northeast, nine points in the Midwest, seven points in the South and five points in the West,” according to a news release about the survey. Reading scores “dropped seven points in the Northeast, seven points in the Midwest and six points in the South,” but there were no measurable differences in reading across Western schools.