Students across the country fell behind academically last school year, raising concerns over whether any progress has been made in overcoming learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a new report published on Tuesday by NWEA, a non-profit research organization that develops academic assessments, students’ performance on the MAP Growth reading and math tests during the 2022-2023 school year “lagged prepandemic trends in all but the youngest cohort of students, falling short of prepandemic averages by 1–19% in reading and by 6–15% in math.”
Researchers analyzed the assessments of 6.7 million public school students in grades 3-8, concluding that students would need at least four months of additional instruction in each of the two subjects to recover.
“Disappointing as these results may be, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that things would likely be so much worse without the enduring work of educators and schools to support students in this moment,” said Karyn Lewis, a co-author of the study and director of the Center for School and Student Progress at NWEA, per a news release.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the issue is evident around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, where North Texas’ two biggest public school systems continue to struggle to provide quality education to their students.
According to the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) latest accountability reports, Dallas ISD and Fort Worth ISD both logged alarming STAAR scores in reading and math. At Dallas ISD, only 43% of students scored at grade level or above in reading, and 39% scored at grade level or above in math. For its part, Fort Worth ISD logged 38% of its students at grade level or above in reading and 25% in math.
“COVID-19 may no longer be an emergency, but we are very much still dealing with the fallout from the crisis. These data reiterate that recovery will not be linear, easy, or quick and we cannot take our foot off the gas pedal,” Lewis said, per the news release.
Lewis and her colleagues concluded:
“[T]he disappointing progress toward pandemic recovery that we see at the end of 2022–23 makes it increasingly clear that the scale of the crisis and its repercussions on students’ academic progress surpass what can be fully addressed with the current response.
“While schools are taking steps in the right direction, the reality is that the depth and breadth of the crisis demands an even more comprehensive, intensive, and sustainable approach if we are to truly mitigate the long-lasting impacts of the pandemic on students.”