Washington -The drop in reading performance and mathematics of high school students throughout the United States, which began a decade ago, persisted during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the students of the students of 12th grade falling at their lowest level in more than 20 years, according to the results of an exam known as the national qualifications report, published on Tuesday.
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The eighth grade students also lost ground in scientific skills, according to the results of the National Evaluation of Educational Progress (NAEP).
The evaluations were the first from the pandemic for eighth grade students and 12th grade in reading and mathematics. They reflect a descending trend at all levels of degree and thematic areas in the previous Naep publications, which is considered one of the best indicators of academic progress in the schools of the United States.
“The qualifications of our students with the worst performance are in historical minimums,” said Matthew Soldner, an interim commissioner of the National Education Statistics Center. “These results should promote us all to take concerted and specific actions to accelerate student learning.”
Although the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on student performance, experts pointed out that the decrease in qualifications is part of a longer arc in education that cannot be attributed only to COVID-19, the closure of schools and related problems such as the increase in absenteeism. The educators pointed out potential underlying factors, such as the increase in the time that students spend the screens, the reduction of attention capacity and a decline in reading longer texts both inside and outside the school.
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The fall in reading grades appeared along with a change in how English and language are taught in schools, focusing on short texts and book extracts, said Carol Jago, associate director of the California reading and literature project in UCLA. As a high school teacher 20 years ago, Jago said it was usual for her students to read 20 books over a year. Now, some English classes assign only three books per course.
“To be a good reader, you have to have resistance to stay on the page, even when things get difficult,” Jago said. “You have to develop those muscles and we are not developing them in children.”
The Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, said that the qualifications show why the president’s government, Donald Trump, wants to give states more control over educational spending.
“Despite spending billions annually in numerous K-12 programs, the performance gap is expanding, and more last year students are yielding below the basic level in mathematics and reading that never before,” said McMahon.
The Democrats of the House of Representatives said that the efforts of the Administration to dismantle the Department of Education will only harm the students. The decline shows a need for federal investment in academic recovery and educational equity, said Democratic Representative Bobby Scott, from Virginia, a high -level member of the Chamber Education and Labor Committee.
“Eliminating the agency responsible for supporting public schools and enforcing students’ civil rights protections will only increase the performance gaps identified by this evaluation,” said Scott.
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The loss in mathematics and reading
The test qualifications show that more students do not reach what would be considered a “basic” achievement in all theme areas, said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the Government Board of the National Evaluation. Although the definition of “competent” of Naep is a high standard, Muldoon indicated that not excessive, and is based on what researchers believe that students should be able to achieve at the end of high school.
“These students are taking their next steps in life with less skills and less knowledge in basic subjects than their predecessors a decade ago,” he said. “This is happening at a time when the rapid advances in technology and society demand more of future workers and citizens, no less.”
In reading, the average qualification in 2024 was the lowest in the history of the evaluation, which began in 1992. 32% of the students of the last year of high school obtained qualifications below “basic”, which means that they could not find details in a text to help them understand their meaning.
In mathematics, the average rating last year was the lowest since 2005, when the evaluation framework changed significantly. In the exam, 45% of last year students of high school obtained grades below the “basic” achievement, the highest percentage since 2005. Only 33% of last year students were considered academically prepared for mathematics courses at the university level, a 37% decrease in 2019.
Reading evaluations and high school mathematics, and the Eighth Grade Science Test, are carried out less frequently than the biannual test reading tests, which were last published for the beginning of this year. The new qualifications reflect tests carried out in schools throughout the country between January and March 2024.
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The performance gap grows
The gap among students with the best and worse performance was the widest in history among eighth grade students, reflecting a growing inequality in the US school system. The performance gap was also expanded in 12th grade mathematics.
The qualifications also reflect the reappearance of a gender gap in science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses. In 2019, boys and girls obtained practically the same qualifications in the NAEP Science evaluation. But in 2024, girls experienced a more pronounced fall in the qualifications. A similar pattern occurred in state mathematics evaluations, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
The schools had largely solved the gender gap in mathematics and sciences, which was extended in the years after pandemic as special programs to involve girls were suspended.
In a NAEP survey to students, an increasing percentage of eighth grade students said it regularly participated in learning activities based on the classroom inquiry. Pandemia interrupted the ability of schools to create these practical learning experiences for students, which are often critical to understand scientific concepts and processes, said Christine Cunningham, Senior Vice President of STEM Learning in the Boston Science Museum.
Even so, he noted that falls in all matters began long before schools closed in 2020.
“We do not know exactly what the cause is, but it would be a mistake to assume that if we had not had Covid, the qualification would not have dropped,” said Cunningham. “That is not what the data showed even before the pandemic.”
* By Annie Ma and Todd Feathers / AP
Feathers reported from New York.
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