HAMPTON ROADS, Va. — The National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as NAEP or the 'Nation's Report Card," highlighted the severe learning loss endured by American children since the pandemic, and no state was spared.
Released Monday morning, the NAEP saw the largest decrease in math test scores since the exam was administered. Meanwhile, reading scores dropped to 1992 levels.
Virginia was hit particularly hard by the news.
According to Virginia State Superintendent Jillian Balow, Virginia saw the most severe drop in reading test scores in the entire country.
Only 32% of Virginia's 4th graders performed proficiently in reading, compared to 43% in 2017. Balow says this 12-point drop has been foreshadowed for years.
"More than 20 years of gains have been completely wiped out," she said. "And this massive learning loss cannot be blamed solely on the pandemic because more than half of this learning loss happened before anyone even heard of Covid-19."
State leaders say these scores should serve as a wake-up call.
"Today's data release is a clear and heart-wrenching statement that Virginia is failing our students," said Virginia Secretary of Education, Aimee Guidera.
Not only are 4th grade students not meeting expectations, but test scores show 8th graders are behind the curve as well.
Balow says only just 31% of Virginia's 8th graders scored proficiently in math, compared to 40% in 2017. Nationwide, test scores revealed nearly four in ten 8th graders failed to grasp basic math concepts.
This led Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin to announce Monday morning seven initiatives he believes will help combat this learning loss.
- Increasing expectations by raising SOL cut-off scores from the lowest in the nation to the highest.
- Empowering parents with emergency support for their students. This includes $30 million in recovery grants so kids can have one on one lessons with a retired teacher or partake in virtual learning.
- Launching partnerships with Kahn Academy and SchoolHouse.World to provide tutoring and homework support.
- Holding schools accountable.
- Continuing to strengthen the pipeline of high-quality teachers. This includes $6 million to support teacher apprenticeship programs.
- Providing teachers, students, and families with more clear and actionable information through student success reports and a learning needs dashboard.
- Requiring school divisions to update their spending plans by December 31 to utilize unspent recovery funds.
Norfolk and Virginia Beach were called out specifically by Youngkin for not using their learning recovery funds. Youngkin says there is still a total of $2 billion in funds that schools across the state haven't touched.
"Norfolk City Public Schools have $136 million dollars left...Virginia Beach Public Schools have $82 million left," explained Youngkin. "The money is in the bank. It should be spent to get our kids back on track for success."
Meanwhile, Dr. James Fedderman, President of Virginia Education Association gave the following statement:
“With the predictable declines in math and reading test scores on the NAEP test today for Virginia, along with the rest of the country, the Youngkin administration took the opportunity to politicize the results and blame his predecessors. He put out a plan to respond to the results call: “Our Commitment to Virginia’s Children”.
“The commitment fails to offer a dime of new spending – it just points to existing spending – and it calls for completely insufficient approaches such as requesting tutor volunteers and pointing to free online learning video platforms. Furthermore, the administration calls for arbitrary changes to SOL cut scores and our school accreditation system without pointing to a shred of evidence that this would conceivably lead to any impacts on student outcomes.
“Addressing our real challenges in public schools will take real targeted investments in what’s proven to work: competitive pay, adequate support staff, after school activities, teacher mentorship programs, small class sizes, and modern school infrastructure. The Youngkin administration could respond in a meaningful way to these concerning results if they use our state revenue surplus to invest in critical K-12 services and programs in the upcoming budget.”
Governor Youngkin says his main priority is heightening expectations. This is something he claimed Monday morning that the previous administration had lowered, therefore causing the decreased proficiency scores seen today.
"The underpinnings to this catastrophic performance were decisions made long before we ever heard of Covid-19," said Youngkin. "Listen, we so appreciate our teachers the job they have been asked to do over the course of the last couple of years has particularly has been an extraordinary lift. With that being said, we will need more from you. We will need to reset expectations and we know you're up for it."
This was the first time the NAEP test had been administered since 2019.
