THE LEARNING SLIDE
What’s called the “nation’s report card” was released for 2022 Monday, and it’s not one Tennessee wants to bring home to show Mom and Dad.
The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) data revealed that — despite state attempts at mitigation from the coronavirus pandemic — student scores on fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading exams fell to their lowest levels in nearly a decade at best and in nearly two decades at worst.
The year-over-year state scores almost mirrored exactly the scores across the country, which showed marked declines from 2019 to 2022 in all four test categories.
With the exception of Shelby County (Memphis), which participated in a voluntary assessment program with 25 other large cities, no district- and school-level scores are or will be available.
But the statewide scores amplify the problem. The learning decline from online classes during the last three months of the 2019-2020 school year and from the periods of online learning during the 2020-2021 school year — which varied across the state — is significant.
The NAEP scores are more grim than Tennessee’s standardized test scores, which were released earlier this summer and showed learning gains that returned most results to pre-pandemic levels. The NAEP scores cover a representative sampling of fewer than 10,000 students across the state, while the standardized tests are given — several months later — to nearly a million public-school students.
› Specifically, the data showed that state fourth-grade math scores have equaled or bettered national scores for four of the past five years but are lower than they’ve been since 2011.
› Similarly, state eighth-grade math scores have narrowed in relation to those across the country over the past two decades, coming within a point of the national average in both 2019 and 2022, but they fell an astonishing eight points between 2019 and 2022.
› National fourth-grade reading scores in 2022 are the same as they were in 2003. That year, Tennessee was four points behind the national mark. This year, the state is two points off the national mark. In 2019, though, the state had tied the national mark, so its slide since the pandemic has been greater than the country’s decline.
› State scores in eighth-grade reading have never been more than five points off the national mark since 2003, and in fact were better than or equal to the national score in 2015 and 2019, respectively. But the national mark slid three points since 2019 and the state four points, leaving Tennessee one point behind the national mark.
As the state standardized tests continue to show, the greatest decline has been in the scores of Black students. Their state NAEP scores fell 12 points in fourth-grade math from 2019 to 2022, 10 points in eighth-grade math over the same period and 11 points in fourth-grade reading. They had no significant change in eighth-grade reading, which is a plus.
Among the four categories, the decline in state eighthgrade math was the steepest for several demographics, including 15 points for English language learners and 11 points for those enrolled in the National School Lunch Program.
Tennessee NAEP data that may be worth noting by teachers are that females had no significant changes in their fourthand eighth-grade reading scores from 2019 to 2022, but males fell by six points in fourth-grade scores and by seven points in eighth-grade scores.
The mitigation efforts that have been taken place across the state — including prioritizing literacy, putting a greater emphasis on phonics, changing the way students are taught to read and summer learning loss camps — have not had the positive impacts on boys as much as they may have on girls.
As we pointed out earlier this school year, the reading scores on state tests will be particularly critical this school year because a 2021 law mandated that students who don’t score on grade level are subject to be held back. And we’re talking about tens of thousands of students across the state.
Students, parents and some education experts maintain that we test students too much these days, that teachers must teach to the tests instead of the overall education of the student, and that tests wrongly help determine teacher salaries, among other things.
They may have a point, but this is not 1962 when the nation was populated by largely two-parent families, when most parents saw to it their children were doing the school work they needed and when personal responsibility was a primary student motivating factor.
Without tests today, teachers and administrators wouldn’t know who needs the most help, where the learning gaps are and where the falloff occurs. We only hope that they are picking up new clues, figuring out how to close the gaps and determining where to put supports to prevent more falloff. That will be one of the keys to reversing the pandemic-assisted learning slides that students across the country and in Tennessee are experiencing.