The Daily - The Nation’s ‘Report Card’ on Remote Learning

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

On the first nationwide test of American students since the pandemic, scores plummeted to levels not seen in 20 years. The results show how challenging it was to keep students on track during the pandemic.What do the scores tell us about remote learning, who lost the most ground academically, and what can schools do to help students recover?Guest: Sarah Mervosh, a national reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: In the U.S., students in most states and across almost all demographic groups have experienced troubling setbacks in both math and reading, according to an authoritative national exam released last month.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. On the first nationwide test of American students since the pandemic, scores plummeted to levels not seen in 20 years. Today, I speak to my colleague, Sarah Mirvosh, on what the scores tell us about remote learning and on how schools are now scrambling to help students recover. It's Monday, November 14th. Sarah, hi. Hi, Sabrina. So the last time we worked together was during the early months of the pandemic.

And I remember that there was this really heated debate going on over schools and what teaching remotely would mean for students. And it sounds like now we're getting some answers on what we were all guessing at back then. Yeah, that was one of the most heated debates of the pandemic. It animated so many parents and teachers. It was unprecedented to have schools across the country shut down for months. And then going into the next school year, it was a question of when to open, how long to stay remote. And as we know, different states and different places took different paths. And now, as time has gone on, we have some more insights into how kids did fare during the pandemic.

And one of the clearest insights we have is this key national test, and the results are pretty sobering. So, Sarah, tell us about this test. I mean, presumably people have been tracking this already, right? What's so important about this particular test? Yeah, so this is a test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It's considered sort of a gold standard, and it offers one of the only comparable common measures of how students are doing across all 50 states and for more than a dozen large school districts. So for that reason, it's often called the nation's report card. This test measures skills in two

areas, math and reading. And it tests kids in two important grades, which is fourth grade and eighth grade. And these are considered important milestones. In fourth grade, you're sort of exiting early elementary school, learning all the basics and heading into upper elementary school and then middle school. And in eighth grade, you're soon going to be headed into high school. And typically, this test is given every two years. But because of the pandemic, it was delayed a year. So this is the first time since 2019. And it is our first, you know, real comprehensive authoritative assessment of how kids fared during the pandemic. And Sarah, what were the results of this really

important test? The results were pretty devastating, almost across the board, but particularly in math. in math. So in math, in eighth grade, for example, scores declined in 49 of 50 states, so nearly every state. Wow. 26%. So one in four eighth graders are proficient in math, and that's down from 34%, or about one in three in 2019. So for example, in eighth grade, it means that fewer kids could do something like measuring the length of a diagonal in a rectangle or fewer kids can convert miles to yards. So only a quarter of all eighth graders are proficient in math, according to this test.

Yeah, pretty sobering. And Sarah, what about fourth graders? Yeah, fourth graders fared only slightly better. So there were declines in math in fourth grade in 41 states. And that has meant that just 36% of fourth graders are proficient in math, down from 41% in 2019. Also very low. from 41% in 2019. Also very low. Yeah, it's been starting. What about reading? What happened there?

So there were still declines in reading. It was a little bit less across the board, but definitely still concerning. So reading scores declined in more than half the states. And no state showed sizable improvement in reading. So in terms of proficiency for both fourth and eighth grade, the results were pretty similar.

It meant that about one in three students were proficient in reading. That can sound like a pretty startling number, okay, only one in three. But it doesn't mean that the other two and three students can't read at all, but they maybe not have full mastery know, full mastery of the material and the skills that are needed. So things like analysis and comprehension. So it sounds like the pandemic really had this just devastating effect on academic progress on American children. Yeah, I mean, in the matter of three years, the pandemic wiped away essentially 20 years of slow progress and more or less stability. And particularly in math, very steep declines, the largest declines that we've ever

seen in math in fourth and eighth grade. So Sarah, given all of that, what do we now know about remote learning and whether it works? I mean, going back to that argument we were all having at the beginning of the pandemic, like, do we know the answer now? Yeah, I mean, I think at the highest level, we know that remote learning was not great for kids. And in general, the longer that schools were closed, the longer that kids spent learning online at home, the worse that they did. But how that breaks down is pretty complicated. For example, you know, in fourth grade math, the longer that places were remote, the worse kids tended to do. But if you look at reading, for example, the connection is weaker. And why would that be, Sarah?

Yeah, you know, I've talked to experts who believe that this is because math in general is more affected by what happens in school. Whereas reading, you know, parents are generally more comfortable with reading. They're doing bedtime stories with their kids. Whereas math, like you're not saying like, hey, do some, you know, bedtime fractions, you know, before you go to sleep tonight. Right. So I think there's sort of a hypothesis that maybe parents were helping kids a bit more with reading at home. And another example of where this stuff gets a little complicated is when you look at state-by-state comparisons. So there are places that stayed remote quite a long time, like Maryland or Virginia, that saw some pretty significant declines. quite a long time, like Maryland or Virginia, that saw some pretty significant declines.

But then you look at a place like California, which was sort of a leader nationally in keeping schools closed longest, and compare California to a place like Florida, which was a trailblazer in opening schools sooner. And you see that those two states had declines that were pretty similar. Interesting. What do you make of that? Yeah, I mean, I was a little surprised by California's results. And both of those places were sort of claiming political credit for their decisions. Florida is saying, like, this affirms our decision to open schools sooner. And California is saying, you know, look at how our recovery is going and we're doing really well. saying, you know, look at how our recovery is going and we're doing really well. And so I guess what I make of it is that while there's a lot of reasons and evidence that remote learning was

harmful for kids, it is complicated and there are a lot of other factors at play besides just the status of remote learning. just the status of remote learning. One thing that we do know is that our country's education system is incredibly unequal. And the pandemic and decisions around remote learning only exacerbated some really deep existing inequalities in education. We'll be right back. So, Sarah, before the break, you were talking about inequality in education as a really serious downstream consequence of all this learning loss we've been talking about. Tell me what that means exactly.

Well, I don't think it's going to come as a huge surprise to anyone that even before the pandemic, there was massive inequality in our country's education system. So some kids come into school and go through school with incredible advantages. They have wealth at home, they have resources, they have a safe place to study, and all of those supports. And others come in behind, and that manifests itself in things like, what kind of access to books do they have growing up as a young kid? Are there funding disparities that make their school not have a ton of money? Who can afford a tutor or extra help outside of school? And it probably also isn't a surprise that this often breaks down along lines of class and race. So kids from low-income families are generally more likely to struggle in school,

have lower scores than kids from wealthier families, and in general, Black and Hispanic and Native American students, on average, score lower than some of their white and Asian peers. Right. Basically, schools reflect our broader society and all of its inequalities. Exactly. And those issues of inequality have contributed to this really worrying trend that was already taking place before the pandemic, which is this growing gap that we've been seeing between our highest performers and our lowest performers in school. So even before the pandemic, those groups of students, the kids at the bottom of their class and at the top of their class were growing further

apart. And that was really being driven by losses among the lowest performers. So, you know, kids who were struggling the most in their bottom 10, 25% had generally been losing ground, while top performers at the top of their class may have been holding steady or even gaining. So this was happening even before the pandemic? Yeah. And what explains it? I mean, I think there are a lot of factors that play into it, and it's probably fair to speculate that all of the ways that our society is becoming unequal plays into that. But one big takeaway we have from this test and a lot of other information we have out there is that that gap is only growing worse. In what way? So for example, in fourth grade math, the top performers, the students in the 90th percentile of their class, lost two points on

the test during the pandemic. So they lost some ground. But the bottom performers, so students who were in the bottom 10% of their class, they lost seven points. So more than those at the top of the class. Wow. So the kids who struggled the most lost a lot more ground than the top performers did. Yeah. So two points compared to seven points. And again, it's important to remember the students at the bottom were already at the bottom. They didn't have a ton of ground to lose. And so to see the top performers sort of generally holding steady two points is sort of a flat line compared to the students at the bottom who are dropping off. And again, as you said, this lines up with the

types of inequalities that have been part of our society for a long time. Yeah. And in fact, some researchers from Stanford and Harvard did an analysis of these latest test results and found that yes, remote learning was a driver of educational outcomes over this period, but actually poverty was more of a driver than even remote learning. And what do you make of that, Sarah? Well, there are a lot of reasons why remote learning, the pandemic, everything that came with these past few years were harder for lower income students, struggling students. There was a pretty striking statistic that was part of this test. In a survey to students, they asked, you know, about their conditions of learning. And, you know, in fourth grade math, for example,

the low performing students, those students who were sort of in the bottom of their class, only half of them had access to a computer at all times during the 2020-21 school year, compared to 80% of high performing students. And a similar sort of dynamic played out with having access to a quiet place to work. So you can imagine, you know, a low-income student, a kid who's struggling in school, you know, in a crowded space at home. There's also like a lot going on during this time.

We know that during much of this time, vaccines were not available. We know COVID hit lower-income communities, Black and Hispanic communities at harder rates. Family members may have been dying. They may have had to have been caring for a sibling while a parent is working. There's so many factors that go into this. And a lot of them reflect the deep inequities in our society.

And the pandemic, as we know, really laid bare all of those. So, Sarah, for these kids, the ones you're talking about here, who had the most learning loss during the pandemic, what does all of this mean for them? What does it mean for their future? Yeah, this is really important. Students who are not sort of on track to be proficient readers in early elementary school can go on to struggle the whole rest of their careers. elementary school can go on to struggle the whole rest of their careers. Students who are not on track by ninth grade can be less likely to graduate from high school and go on to college. And all of that can affect the quality of your life for years to come, your health, your happiness, how much you make. And these are millions, millions of American children who are in school right now. And we're

talking about their futures. So this whole time, Sarah, we've been talking about the problems. But I want to talk a little bit about the potential solutions and what we can say about them. What are people doing to try to fix this? Yeah, this is where it gets back to who we were just talking about, like, who are the kids who are most harmed and how can we target resources to help them the most. So the federal government has invested historic amounts of money in schools to help students recover from the pandemic. This is part of the federal pandemic relief package that was passed. And so the last round of that was $123 billion. Wow. And that works out to about $2,400 per student. That sounds like a lot.

Yeah, it is a lot of money. It represents the federal government's largest single investment in American schools. But there's not a lot of oversight on what schools should do with that money. One of the only requirements the government has given is that schools need to spend at least 20% of the money on academic recovery. Just 20%? Isn't the whole point to catch kids up? It is, but there are also a lot of other things that were going on in kids' lives. You know, lots of kids had struggles with mental health during the pandemic. So lots of places are using some of this money to fund things like

hiring extra counselors. And schools have been underinvested in for a very long time. And so some places are deciding to use this money for things like upgrading their facilities or new building projects. So these are things that would actually directly benefit kids, but might not be considered academic recovery per se. Yeah, exactly. Schools have had to balance a lot, but there is a growing consensus and sort of call of alarm to really make sure we're spending this money on academic recovery because it is important to remember that we have a limited amount of time to catch kids up, particularly kids who are older and middle and high school. They've had several years now affected by the pandemic and we're on a time

frame to make sure that they're on track to graduate. So a lot of this money is being spent on academic recovery. And one of the most promising areas in a popular strategy is tutoring. The research has shown we know that tutoring, when done in small groups of three to four students with a trained tutor multiple times a week during the school day, that is one of the most effective ways to help students accelerate their learning. Got it. So tutoring works, but is it enough to catch kids up? So tutoring alone is unlikely to solve this problem for all of our children. For example, there's some research that has shown that tutoring, when done well under these conditions,

can yield something like 19 weeks of additional gains for students. That's a lot, but for low-income kids who attended a school that was remote for a long time, those students have lost something like 22 weeks of instruction. So you can see that there's still a gap even with one of the most promising interventions out there, 19 weeks versus 22 weeks. And so there are people who are calling for even more dramatic action, doing things like extending the school day or even extending the school year. And I talked to one researcher who sort of made the argument that actually there are ways to combine these strategies to sort of supercharge them, if you will. So let's say you extended your school day for an hour or

two and you use that time to make sure that kids were getting tutoring during the school day. You could see how that would help kids make up that lost ground. Right. But totally reinventing the school day or the school year, that sounds like it's a tough sell. Yeah, it can be controversial and politically a big ass. We're talking about things that are really valued in our culture and American traditions, like summer vacations and time after school for sports and activities and all these other things. And at the same time, there are experts and people who are well-versed in this who are making the case that the pandemic disrupted our lives and society and changed the trajectory of students' careers. And so the interventions need to be equally disruptive.

So this is basically a giant experiment that our schools are having to perform in real time with huge consequences for students. Yeah, and it has a timer on it because the money, the federal money that the government allocated needs to be sort of spoken for by 2024. Oh, wow.

This is our shot to spend the money in the right way and help kids catch up. So, Sarah, what are the lessons of all of this? I mean, given everything you've described, you know, how difficult and quite devastating it's been for underprivileged kids who really are the future of the country. Was this much remote learning for this long a mistake? You know, it's a good question, Sabrina, and it's a really hard one to answer. If you think back to where we were in 2020, we didn't have as much information as we have now. Families and educators are making very, very deeply personal decisions

that sort of pit health and safety, you know, versus the academic and social and emotional well-being of kids against one another. That's an impossible position to be in. People were afraid. Yeah, people were. And people have strong opinions on both sides, as they should, because these are our kids. While it is a good question, it is maybe not the one that we should be focused on right now. The question that I think we should be focused on now is where do we go from here? What do we do about this? How do we, you know, use this moment to help kids catch up, but also begin to close gaps that, as we've talked about, have existed for a long time and were existing before the pandemic? This is a pivotal moment and the stakes could not be higher because these are our kids and it's their futures.

Sarah, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. The election is a great win for the American people. Democrats have kept control of the U.S. Senate after narrowly winning races in Nevada and Arizona over the weekend. It was the latest sign that Republicans alienated midterm voters.

The American people rejected the anti-democratic extremist MAGA Republicans. In Nevada, Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, long seen as vulnerable, defeated Republican Adam Laxalt. And in Arizona, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly beat Republican challenger Blake Masters. Vote counting took several days to account for mail-in ballots, which favored Democrats. Those victories mean Democrats have, at the very least, re-established their 50-50 majority in the Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris holds the tie-breaking vote for the party.

Democrats could increase their majority to 51, depending on the outcome of a runoff election next month in Georgia. Meanwhile, Democrats have a small chance of keeping control of the House after flipping a seat held by a Republican in Washington state. To hold the chamber, Democrats would have to win the majority of House races still to be called, many of them in California. Finally, called, many of them in California. Finally, Ukraine took back the southern city of Kherson on Friday, a strategic prize that dealt a major blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was Russia's third major retreat of the war and came just weeks after Putin declared the Kherson region to be part of Russia.

Over the weekend, scenes of jubilation played out in Kherson, where crowds of local residents greeted Ukrainian soldiers and waved Ukrainian flags, welcoming them along on the main street. Unlike Russia's sudden retreat several months ago from an area in Ukraine's northeast, which happened almost overnight, Friday's retreat was slower and more controlled, with no evidence that Russian soldiers were fleeing haphazardly. Today's episode was produced by Luke Vander Ploeg and Will Reed. It was edited by Patricia Willans, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I sabrina tavernisi see you tomorrow