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While this newsletter is not focused on education, many of the recent editions on teacher strikes, teacher shortages, classroom politics, and student loans Debt – We are stuck in that space.
today is national Test score data suggesting that 9-year-olds in the United States took big steps during the Covid-19 pandemic when they were not physically in their classrooms.
According to a CNN report, from 2020 to 2022, average scores in math and reading have fallen “to levels not seen in decades.”
- Down 7 points in math – first ever down.
- Reading proficiency fell by 5 percentage points, the biggest drop since 1990.
A further drop in scores among low-performing students and black and Hispanic students suggests the pandemic has been more difficult for groups of people already suffering.
This result has been interpreted as evidence of what many parents, teachers, and other sentient beings had already suspected. In other words, distance learning was a failure.
“It’s not surprising,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, speaking on CNN’s “New Day” Thursday. “If you look back a year and a half ago, more than half of our schools were not open to full-time study.”
what is this test? The national assessment of educational progress conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics is known as the . “National Report Card”. It is a congressionally mandated program within the U.S. Department of Education that selects a representative sample of students to project a national picture.
face-to-face learning. Cardona argued that the Biden administration helped school districts resume in-person learning, which may be technically correct, but runs counter to perceptions that Republican-led states rushed to reopen schools. There is
school and politics. Republicans have looked at grassroots school board politics and getting kids physically in school as a campaign issue, but their efforts have turned into controversies over race and gender. .
These battles are often cited as a frustration for teachers and everyone else who runs the school. guidance counselor.
- Related: Read the Race Deconstructed newsletter. Brandon Tensley writes that teachers face a perfect storm of challenges that reveals much about inequality in this country.
Teacher burnout is real. Over 70 children in some classes. CNN’s Gabe Cohen went to a rural school district outside of Phoenix. Stacy Brady is in her 10th grade biology class, 70 students.
“For me it is It was very chaotic,” Brady told Cohen. “I wish I could clone myself can’t reach For all children in need. “
Cohen reported that Casagrande’s elementary school district has moved to a four-day week to keep teachers. Meanwhile, their high school is looking overseas for more candidates. Also, in some classrooms, They have parapros teach lesson plans prepared by a licensed person. A teacher like Brady. See Cohen’s report.
An old problem at stake. He wrote that the Casa Grande has had a teacher shortage for years. The billions of dollars injected into the federal pandemic relief fund have really hit some rural areas. Because larger districts lured teachers out by offering better salaries and benefits.
Leaving teachers and few people wanting to join the field was also a problem pre-pandemic, but it has overheated in the last two years. CNN’s Christina Maxouris and Christina Zdanowicz wrote more about it earlier this year.
“I think the perception of teaching is that there is little respect and reward for the amount of work that has to be done,” said the Northern California student. A teacher named Priscilla told them. “It’s not as prestigious as others, such as doctors and nurses.”
“Certainly, what everyone in education agrees on is that it’s been very difficult to be a public school teacher for the last three years,” said New America’s vice president of education policy. One Kevin Carey told me.
“The pandemic has been a real blow to the entire education system,” he said. “I think everything we know about learning teaches us that learning really needs consistency and momentum, and whatever interruptions have long-term consequences.”
We spend a lot of money on education. You might think the answer is to spend more money on school, and that’s probably part of the answer. I was a little shocked to find out that there are many.
What’s more, all of the federal pandemic relief money school districts are looking to spend suggests the problem is bigger than just funding.
“I was a fourth grade teacher, and I know these students need small classes, they need tutoring, they need extra support,” Cardona said. New Day,” adding that governments are allocating billions of dollars to post-pandemic education. “Fundraising I’m there,’ he said.
Please don’t lump all these issues together. For another perspective, we spoke to Frederick Hess, who leads education policy research at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute.
He said his new test scores were devastating, “It’s nothing surprising.” It was “indefensible and immoral” for the US to open bars and nail salons a year before school during the pandemic, Hess added.
But he refuted my question as to whether there was a new, greater education crisis in the country. I asked him to look at everything from “The Nation’s Report Card” test scores and teacher shortages to student debt problems.
All these problems are occurring, he said.
Hess: There are many ongoing concerns in this country. college expenses. Student performance had stagnated during his decade prior to 2019. Our schools are mediocre internationally despite having the highest spending per child anywhere in the world. I’m afraid I’m not getting the value I deserve for my tuition and higher education. Teachers feel overburdened. And I think the pandemic has completely exacerbated and highlighted all these challenges.
However, after discussing each of these issues separately, Hess argued that it was important to see them clearly.
Hess: I don’t know if bundling these directly is useful unless you’re affected by the pandemic. I am concerned that people talk of them as aspects of a sort of single unifying crisis, distorting the complexity of the field and making individual challenges difficult to resolve, each requiring specific remedies. increase.
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