Education Week - November 2, 2022 - 17

In Math, Pool of Struggling Learners Grows
The average NAEP math score fell 5 points in 4th
grade, to 236 out of 500, and in 8th grade fell 8 points,
to 274 out of 500. In prior years, the top-performing 10
percent of math students held their ground, while the
lowest-achieving students fell. This time, however, math
achievement fell across every percentile, even for the
highest performers.
" Normally, for a NAEP assessment at the national level,
we're talking about significant differences of 2 and 3 points.
So an 8-point decline that we're seeing in the math data
is stark; it is troubling; it is significant, " said Peggy Carr,
the commissioner of the National Center for Education
Statistics, which administers the NAEP.
In both grades 4 and 8, more students cannot meet even
the basic level of math achievement, according to the
NAEP report. The pool of advanced performers in math
has likewise shrunk at both grades, though top readers
have held steady.
Roberto Rodríguez, the Education Department's
assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy,
noted that, in a prior NAEP study of districts' practices
during the pandemic, 75 percent of districts reported that
they held remedial programs this summer, and more
than half of districts in the study reported using intensive
tutoring to help catch students up.
" Kids need more time, " said Patricia Levesque the
chief executive officer of the Foundation for Excellence
in Education (ExcelinEd), in a briefing before the NAEP
results were released. " They lost time over the last several
years, of getting instruction that they need in math, and we
need to figure out ways to give them more time. "
Levesque pointed to states like Tennessee, which is
50
40
30
20
10
2011
requiring high-dosage tutoring for students performing
below grade level. However, with large swaths of students
now far behind, paying for intensive tutoring may be hard
to sustain after federal pandemic recovery funding runs
out.
And it's not clear teachers feel ready to take on the
severity of students' learning loss.
More than a third of 4th graders and 21 percent of 8th
NAEP Math Results, by Achievement Level
> INTERACTIVE: Use the tabs below to toggle between data sets.
graders who participated in NAEP had a teacher who
reported spending nearly every day on remedial material
in math. But less than half of students in either grade had
teachers who were confident in their ability to address
knowledge and skill gaps in math.
" We've known for decades that many teachers,
especially in high-poverty areas, are not as mathematically
confident, " said Zalman Usiskin, a professor emeritus and
director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics
Project. " They tend to focus more on memorization and
the most basic of basic skills, not on problem-solving. ...
and the prediction has to be that it's going to get worse,
because teachers now are trying to catch up students who
are behind because of pandemic-related disruptions. "
Grade 8 Reading
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
2011
Grade 4 Math
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
7*
34*
2013
42*
41*
18*
2011
8
7
8
9*
8
34*
34*
2015
39
32*
2017
Percentage Students at Benchmark
42*
Below Basic
Basic

40
Advanced
32*
29
2019
39
202
17*
18*
2013
2015
20*
2017
Percentage Students at Benchmark
Below Basic
Grade 8 Math
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
8*
26*
39*
27*
2011
2013
Basic

Advanced
19*
2019
25
2022
9*
8*
10*
10*
7
27*
25*
24*
24*
20
38*
38*
36
35
35
26*
29*
2013
2015
2015
30*
2017
Percentage Students at Benchmark
Below Basic
* Significantly different from 2022
Below Basic
* Significantly different from 2022
Reading Drops Are Smaller But Hit Low-Achievers Hard
Nationwide, the average reading score on NAEP
fell 3 points from 2019 to 2022, to 217 in grade 4 and
260 in grade 8. While not as large a drop as math, it
represented a significant decline in reading skills
for both grades for all but the top 10 percent of 4th
graders.
While experts have urged schools to accelerate
students' learning in order to help them make up lost
academic ground, more than half of 8th graders had
teachers who reported using remedial measures at least
once or twice a week, and 20 percent had teachers who
did so nearly every day. Among 4th graders, 70 percent
of teachers reported using remedial measures a couple
times a week. Moreover, about 1 in 3 students who took
NAEP in 2022 had a teacher who reported covering the
previous year's material and using remedial instruction
every day or nearly every day.
When it comes to acceleration, " it just seems as
if we expect teachers to know how to do that, " said
Kymyona Burk, the policy director for early literacy at
ExcelinEd, and a former literacy director for the state
of Mississippi. " We have to invest in people, we have to
invest in their knowledge. "
In both grades 4 and 8, larger numbers of students
cannot read at even the basic academic level than was
the case in 2019, according to the 2022 NAEP report.
Top readers have held steady, but gained little ground.
Burk said states need to bolster the use of sciencebased
reading instruction to help students who started
school during the pandemic and may struggle more
with foundational reading skills.
Looking ahead, there are some signs of recovery in
reading at least. One study by the testing group Amplify
looked at more than 300,000 K-3 students in 43 states
who took the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy
Skills, or DIBELS, assessment, this fall-which would
be the most recent, available testing data. That study
found that while students in all grades remain below
their pre-pandemic reading achievement, the share of
students who started school this fall on track to read on
grade level by the end of the academic year ticked up in
every grade, ranging from 33 percent of kindergarteners
to 55 percent of 3rd graders.
" The news may be still a bit grim, although the
positive side is that, directionally, we are seeing that
students at the beginning of this year are more prepared
for school than they were at the beginning of last year, "
said Paul Gazzerro, the director of data analysis for
Amplify.
Still, the Amplify study suggests large shares of
students-ranging from half of kindergartners to 30
percent of 3rd graders-won't read on grade level by the
end of this school year without significant, intensive
interventions.
Grade 4 Reading
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
8*
26*
34*
33*
2011
Basic

2017
Percentage Students at Benchmark
Advanced
Basic
NAEP Reading Results, by Achievement Level
> INTERACTIVE: Use the tabs below to toggle between data sets.

*Significantly different from 2022
Advanced
SOURCE: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2021 School Survey, Institute of Education
Sciences
31*
2019
38
2022
2019
202
SOURCE: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2021 School Survey, Institute of Educ
Sciences
8
9
9
9
9
27*
27*
27*
26*
24
33*
33*
31*
31*
29
32*
31*
2013
2015
32*
2017
Percentage Students at Benchmark
Below Basic
Grade 8 Reading
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
3
30*
42*
24*
2011
Basic

Advanced
34*
2019
37
2022
4
4
32*
31*
4*
32*
4
29*
4
27
42*
42*
40*
39
39
22*
24*
2013
2015
24*
2017
Percentage Students at Benchmark
Below Basic
* Significantly different from 2022
SOURCE: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2021 School Survey, Institute of Education
Sciences
Political Fallout?
Well before NAEP results were made public, some education
pundits predicted students in states that reopened their
schools earlier in the pandemic would have better scores
than students in states with longer pandemic-related spans
of virtual schooling. Michael Petrilli, the president of the
Thomas B. Fordham Institute, suggested that differences in the
performance between states that reopened school buildings for
in-person learning earlier in the pandemic could become fodder
in midterm elections.
But Carr, the NCES commissioner, strongly disagreed with
interpreting the results in that way.
" There's nothing in this data that says we can draw a straight
line between the time spent in remote learning, in and of itself,
and student achievement, " Carr said. " And let's not forget that
remote learning looked very different all across the United
States. ... We have massive comprehensive decline everywhere,
whether some were in remote learning longer or shorter than
others. "
By the start of 2020-21, the first full school year of the
pandemic, an Education Week analysis found that several states
had mandated full-time, in-person learning, (Arkansas, Florida,
Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico,
North and South Carolinas, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and
West Virginia) but nearly three-quarters of the 100 largest
school districts (representing 9 million students) opened that fall
only with virtual instruction.
In reading, 8th graders lost ground in all but two of those
states; Iowa and Texas had flat scores, but so did several
late-opening states like California, New York, and New Jersey.
Performance was more mixed at 4th grade, with seven
early-opening states and at least one late-opening one,
California, seeing no change in reading achievement during the
pandemic.
The other six early-opening states saw drops in 4th grade
reading in 2022. In math, only South Carolina and Iowa among
the early-opening states held steady in 4th grade. The rest
saw drops in math achievement from 2019 to 2022. And Utah,
the only state that saw no decline in 8th grade math, had no
mandate on schools reopening at the start of 2020-21.
EDUCATION WEEK | November 2, 2022 | www.edweek.org | 17
Basic

Advanced
27*
2019
30
2022

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - November 2, 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - November 2, 2022