It turns out the pandemic wasn’t the sole reason for student challenges

Those who believed that public school pupils were bouncing back from pandemic-related setbacks were taken aback last week as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card” — indicated that assessment scores for fourth and eighth graders have continuously fallen in reading, while only marginally improving in math.

This is due to more than just the pandemic, asserts Martin West, academic dean of the Graduate School of Education, who is a member of both the NAEP board and the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. West, the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education, engaged in a conversation with the Gazette regarding the Massachusetts and U.S. results — and the other contributing factors — in this edited dialogue.

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Chronic absenteeism, exacerbated by the pandemic, has frequently been cited for declining scores. Is that your observation?

Chronic absenteeism more than doubled across the nation during the pandemic and has been very gradual to decrease, remaining below pre-pandemic levels. However, I believe that’s not the complete picture, as the downturn in reading achievement nationwide began well before the pandemic, dating back to 2015. What we’re witnessing at this juncture is more a result of a decade of consistent declines in students’ reading comprehension abilities rather than merely the aftermath of the pandemic.

What other factors could be influencing this?

Numerous hypotheses exist, and regrettably, the national data alone cannot clarify which is accurate. To me, the two most plausible explanations are, firstly, the surge of social media and what some term screen-centered childhoods during the 2010s, which has impacted students’ reading habits outside the classroom. Secondly, the easing of test-based accountability policies that commenced around 2010 and has persisted to the present.

Are you suggesting that assessments are responsible?

I wouldn’t characterize it that way. We still evaluate students annually in grades three through eight and once in high school, which remains a federal mandate. However, states have been granted significantly more flexibility in how they respond to the outcomes of those assessments, and the majority of states have adopted a relatively hands-off approach. Thus, it’s not that students are undergoing fewer assessments; we simply do not place much emphasis on the results anymore.

Approximately two-thirds of white, Asian, and non-economically disadvantaged students scored at or above the “proficient” level on the fourth-grade math examination, whereas only about one-quarter of Black, Latino, and economically disadvantaged students did so in Massachusetts, with a similar gap observed in reading results. Can you elaborate on this disparity?

Recent data indicates an increasing inequality in performance between higher-achieving and lower-achieving students. The newly released 2024 results show that the modest improvements made in fourth-grade math were primarily driven by advances among higher-achieving students, while the scores for lower-achieving students remained stagnant.

The declines we observed in reading achievement for both fourth and eighth graders were predominantly due to decreases for lower-achieving students. This divergence extends a pattern that has been evident since the middle of the last decade, resulting in considerably greater inequality. Often, this inequality aligns with demographic factors such as economic disadvantage and race and ethnicity.

Historically, national initiatives like “No Child Left Behind” aimed to elevate test scores for low-performing students. In Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey has introduced the state’s Literacy Launch initiative to counteract recent trends.

The Healey administration has allocated significant resources and political efforts toward its Literacy Launch initiative, and I truly hope this will serve as a crucial step toward a comprehensive strategy for enhancing literacy rates in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts enjoys a moment of pride every two years when the NAEP results are released, as it stands as the highest-achieving state across all four assessments.

Yet, it is essential to acknowledge that there are two narratives from Massachusetts in this round of NAEP results. One is the “best in the nation” narrative. The other reveals that we continue to experience significant learning loss due to the pandemic, and we have significantly declined from peak achievement levels observed earlier in the last decade.

We have also not been exempt from the trend of increasing inequality between higher-achieving and lower-achieving students. In reality, the achievement gaps related to economic disadvantage in Massachusetts are as substantial, if not greater, than those anywhere else in the country.

The trends reflected in the 2024 results for Massachusetts approximately mirror those observed nationally. Students showed some advancement toward recovering from pandemic-related learning losses in fourth-grade math but did not show any progress in recovering in eighth-grade math, where they had encountered even larger declines.

Although reading scores in Massachusetts were officially unchanged as they did not statistically differ from the level recorded in 2022, they nonetheless displayed a downward trend consistent with national observations.

Could you clarify the minor rebound in fourth-grade math scores? Why might there be a recovery in math while reading continues to decline?

It is often noted that math achievement tends to be more responsive to students’ in-school experiences—the amount of instructional time, the caliber of the curriculum, and pedagogical methods—than reading achievement, which is more significantly impacted by all experiences students encounter outside of school. This could elucidate why we observe recovery efforts yielding faster progress in math than in reading.