The COVID-19 pandemic has had a long-term impact on grade-school education, as new data released Wednesday shows 13-year-olds nationwide tested significantly lower in reading and math, with math scores facing the single largest drop in 50 years.
“Most of these students were 10-years-old when the pandemic hit, and schools were disrupted,” Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said in a call with reporters. “The bottom line is these results show that there are gaps in basic skills.”
Carr explained that these assessments focused on basic reading and math skills, such as locating information in a passage of text or calculating the area of a square. Most questions were multiple choice or required short answers, she said.
The newly released scores, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) or the nation’s “report card,” show a decline by 4 points in reading and 9 points in math when compared with the same scores from three years ago, before the onset of the pandemic.
These assessments take place every two years. In 2022, they were canceled because of the pandemic.
The declines were found across school types – rural, suburban and city. Declines also occurred across regions of the country – South, Northeast, Midwest and West.
The data doesn’t include state or district-level scores.
Some racial and ethnic groups experienced higher declines than others.
The biggest decline in math scores was among Native American students, who averaged a 20 point decrease. Black students averaged a decrease of 13 points, Hispanic students faced a 10 point decrease and white students faced a 6 point decrease.
Asian students were the only racial or ethnic group that didn’t experience a statistically significant decline in math scores, despite having a decline like the other groups.
Reading scores for Black and white students decreased by 7 and 4 points respectively, while other groups didn’t experience a statistically significant decrease.
Female students experienced an 11-point decrease in math scores, compared with a 7-point decrease for male students.
Both female and male students experienced the same decline in reading by 4 points.