Overall, the average math score dropped by five points for fourth graders and by eight for 8th graders. It was the largest drop in the history of the NAEP.

Article by Zac Tipton, Senior Producer

WASHINGTON - COVID-19 affected a lot of things in our lives from our jobs to our home lives and our social life, but that’s not all. It also completely changed our schooling. 

Most students were having to take classes directly from their rooms, which impacted not only their ability to learn, but also the teacher’s ability to teach. 

The effects are finally starting to show as National Report Card shows that National Assessment of Educational Progress, NAEP, test scores were down in every single state during the pandemic. This is the first Education Department analysis of test scores since before COVID-19. The NAEP tests hundreds of thousands of kids each year across the US, but this is the first time it’s been given since before COVID. 

In looking at math and reading scores in every state for fourth graders and eighth graders, National Report Card found that every state had drops in both sections for both grade levels. In fourth grade, five states had decreases of more than 10 points in the math section, while in 8th grade the number of states nearly tripled with 14 dropping at least 10 points in that subject. A 10 point drop usually means that a student is behind a full year in learning. 38% of 8th graders tested in the “below basic” level. In 2019, that number was only 31%. Out of all the districts tested, Los Angeles had the only significant uptick with an increase of 9 points. 

One of the bigger statistics to come from this test was that the gap between white students and black and Hispanic students widened. 

Overall, the average math score dropped by five points for fourth graders and by eight for 8th graders. It was the largest drop in the history of the NAEP. The math scores had been on the rise since 1990 and had steadily been increasing. The reading scores had been slowly increasing as well. However, the Department of Education had noticed that scores were starting to drop pre-pandemic, but now it worse than anyone could’ve imagined. 

 “The data prior to the pandemic did not reflect an education system that was on the right track,” said U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “The pandemic simply made it worse. It took poor performance and dropped it down even further.” 

The learning was not easy during the Pandemic as most students were remote, which can make most learning environments incredibly difficult. 77% of schools had reverted to distance learning in the spring of 2020. At the start of the 2020-2021 school year, 49% of all school districts started the year online. 

“Collaborative mathematics is extremely important,” Mark Miller, an eighth-grade teacher from Colorado Springs, Colorado, told the Wall Street Journal. “And, yet, when you’re looking at your peer on a screen, you can’t talk to them, because only one person can talk at a time. There’s not a lot of collaboration going on.”

Some of the bigger city schools have taken this information and already started implementing fixes including summer school improvements and after-school tutoring. Others are just simply adding more time for students to be spending learning math than in the past. With billions going to schools for pandemic aid, schools are now faced with the hard question of figuring out how to spend that money in order to make sure that they never see historically low-test scores ever again.