Student Test Scores Remain Flat or Behind Pre-COVID Levels, Assessments Find

Math and reading scores across the nation continue to decline or remain stagnant nearly five years after the COVID-19 pandemic stalled classroom learning, recent state assessment results indicate.
The New York Department of Education defines proficiency as competency over challenging subject matter. Its recent report card doesn’t include chronic absenteeism and high school graduation rates, but last year’s report listed those as 26.4 percent and 88.3 percent, respectively.
JP O’Hare, speaking for New York’s Department of Education, said the state report card is only one of multiple measures of learning and “cannot tell the whole story of student proficiency.”
Math and reading/ELA scores for elementary and middle school students are the most common indicators for measuring academic growth, although science and social studies test scores across middle school and high school grades are included in the reports. Some states also provide summaries of Regents exams and SAT and ACT scores.
Of the four largest states, Texas is the only one that has yet to release an updated state report card.
The Golden State’s high school graduation rate was nearly 87 percent—the highest rate in six years—and its chronic absenteeism rate has declined since 2021.
The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a nonprofit K–12 assessment and research organization, works with state education departments and school districts across the country to develop state tests, administer supplemental tests to measure progress within one academic year, and identify areas in which teachers can improve instruction. It also determined that public education has not improved since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We never caught up,” Karyn Lewis, NWEA vice president of research and policy partnerships, told The Epoch Times. “We have a compounding debt situation.”
NWEA’s report says that during the 2023–2024 school year (early fall to late spring), average reading scores declined by 36 percent and math scores by 18 percent. The largest decline for math was at the fifth grade level, while middle school ELA scores indicate that most students didn’t have the necessary vocabulary knowledge and decoding skills to read words when they finished elementary school.
“Throughout the pandemic, we have often believed that we were finished with COVID before it was finished with us, and this is yet another example of that. Pandemic fatigue is real, but accepting a new normal of lower achievement and widened inequities is not an option,” the report states.
Lewis said high-dosage tutoring and summer school programs could be effective ways for learning recovery if teachers are not afraid to tell parents how far behind their children have fallen academically and if parents are willing to make sure that their children do the extra work needed when school is in recess.
“They need to communicate the level of need,” she said.