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Let’s not panic over fourth-grade test declines during the pandemic. Not yet, anyway.

Published on 8 Comments on Let’s not panic over fourth-grade test declines during the pandemic. Not yet, anyway.

My plea for everyone to react calmly to the NAEP's test scores of fourth-graders during the pandemic has apparently been ignored:

These headlines are technically correct: Scores declined to the level of 1999, which is indeed "decades." (Two of them.) But that was possible only because we had made such small gains since then in the first place.

I predict that on the 2024 NAEP test we will make up almost all of the progress "lost" during the pandemic. Kids are pretty resilient when it comes to stuff like this.

The only exception I'd point to is the astonishing 13-point drop among Black kids on the math test. That's pretty serious stuff, and it won't be easy to make up.

8 thoughts on “Let’s not panic over fourth-grade test declines during the pandemic. Not yet, anyway.”

    1. Spadesofgrey

      Or stop whining racism and say you don't give a shit about the tests. I doubt negro parents are whipping their kids to learn it.

  2. rick_jones

    The question remains, quoting from the previous post:

    These things tend to wash out in later school years, and I very much doubt that by the time our fourth graders graduate from high school they'll be noticeably different from any other graduating class.

    How to square that assertion with:

    Here's the key thing to look at: gains in elementary school don't matter unless they're sustained throughout the entire 12 years of primary schooling.

    And the assertion in https://jabberwocking.com/new-study-says-american-students-are-improving-are-they/ is they weren’t/aren’t. So gains made in fourth graders are lost by high school, but losses will be washed-out?

    1. aldoushickman

      "So gains made in fourth graders are lost by high school, but losses will be washed-out?"

      That's not such a crazy thought. A lot of human stuff returns to mean. A bout of illness might interfere with your jogging schedule, tanking your training for a few months, but you wouldn't expect to thus be significantly less fit than you would have been otherwise five years later, for example.

  4. Spadesofgrey

    Except state health departments shut down the schools.I could care less about useless, irrelevant test scores. How about abolishing them????

  5. rrhersh

    My kids are a bit older--fifth and seventh grades during the shutdown. My observation is that remote learning is a complete bust (which surprised me not at all), and that it won't really matter. The curriculum is geared pretty slow. Back in the day, bright kids skipped a grade without any real difficulty. There undoubtedly are kids who are motivated but struggle to keep up. I had a roommate in college who was like that: a total grind doing nothing but studying, and pulling down straight C's. It was rather sad. But these are rare. The kid who is both bright and motivated is effectively skipping a grade by virtue of having that lost year. The average kid who is cruising along doing just enough to get by might have to rev things up a bit to catch up, but this won't harm them any. Indeed, it might do them some good to see that they can rev things up if they want to. I think the fraction of kids who will be harmed is small. In a better world we would be identifying them and providing extra support.

  6. D_Ohrk_E1

    Cancel winter and spring break. Next summer's break, too. We shall not stop until the kids have caught up. No child left behind.

    And if any kid is a bad boy or girl, send them home as punishment so that they can be left behind.

    /S

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