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  • Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

There are three terrifying things about the long-term federal test data on 13-year-olds' achievement, writes Vladimir Kogan, an Ohio State political scientist.

Achievement declines have erased five decades' worth of progress, and are "even more shocking" for disadvantaged students, he writes.


Pandemic recovery efforts have been an "abysmal failure," despite nearly $200 billion in federal spending.


Third, "it is probably too late to help the oldest students," writes Kogan. "Recent high school graduates and those who will graduate over the next several years" will be poorly prepared for careers or college.


It's not just academics, he writes. It's hard for students to make up lost learning -- or lost social skills -- if they don't show up consistently..

. . . Widespread absenteeism has become a new normal, perhaps reflecting well-meaning efforts among educators and administrators to show empathy during the pandemic, an erosion of social norms about the importance of attendance or persistence of bad habits — such as late-night gaming and sleeping late — that many kids likely developed during months of prolonged closures or virtual instruction.

Adults are fighting over LGBTQ-themed books in school libraries, Kogan writes. But it won't make much difference if students can't or won't read. "Nearly a third of 13-year-olds now report that they read for fun 'never or hardly ever' — up sharply from a decade ago."

When schools closed, we were told that disrupted students weren't falling behind. They were learning other, unmeasurable things. They were "resilient." The physical, psychological, social and emotional risks were dismissed.

That complacency is dangerous, Kogan concludes. The 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk motivated bipartisan "reforms that focused on establishing high academic standards, greater accountability and a focus on the lowest achievers," he writes. Scores increased and achievement gaps narrowed. Can we do it again?

I see one ray of hope. Many states and school districts have gotten serious about improving reading instruction, and some understand that includes teaching background knowledge and vocabulary, not just isolated skills. That will help.

I'm not hopeful about math. Am I wrong?

8 Comments


Guest
Jul 04, 2023

The slide has been great for my local schools, where the school year was cut 6 weeks short but started on schedule in the fall. We used to be average, now the kids are outstanding, just from having kept plugging along while everyone else when backwards.......

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Bruce Smith
Bruce Smith
Jul 05, 2023
Replying to

Before the pandemic, the U.S.'s international rankings were rising, based on this same, relative reality; but the U.S. suffered worse than almost any developed nation during the pandemic, in part because those Bush decades of focusing on two subjects only (English reading and math) ignored the health science and moral education that students in other nations regularly receive as part of their basic education (before most of them begin vocational training, sometimes as early as 15), which knowledge led to better social cooperation overseas, which reopened schools, led people to willingly get vaccinated, and so forth.

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Guest
Jul 03, 2023

Given that this nation has a (possibly permanent) declining birth rate, I would say simply ignore the problem given that people who have an education will always be able to control those that don't as they make the laws and rules in which society operates

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Guest
Jul 03, 2023

People like Vladimir were bitching about the achievement gap *before* the decline. So who cares?


The fact is that all the improvement we discuss as if it's "significant"isn't, really. So the decline isn't much either. And the reality is that each kid has his or her own test scores. It's not as if the average is applied to the group.

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Guest
Jul 05, 2023
Replying to

Well, and if the standards are too high for most people to reach, how useful are they? Back when I was young, we had the Maryland Functional tests. A gifted 7th grader could pass them at the 99th percentile, no problem. But they guarunteed a certain basic and attainable level of math, reading and civics in high school grads. The new tests that test "deeper thinking" lead to more teaching of test strategies and less teaching of functional skills, because a significant chunk of people aren't capable of abstraction. "Raising" standards across the board actually lowered the quality of the average high school graduate, by creating systems where it was possible to graduate without being able to do basic …


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