US: Sharp decline in basic reading, math skills among 13-year-olds

In the United States, test scores released on Wednesday from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that Math and reading skills among 13-year-olds in the nation hit their lowest level in decades, New York Times reported. The last time, the math scores of the gold-standard federal exam were this low for 13-year-olds was in 1990. In reading, 2004.

The report mentioned that the decline in performance is significant since the school year of 2019-2020, a period of time when the coronavirus (COVID-19) started to spread and forced schools across the globe to shut down.

But the Covid pandemic was not the sole reason as the downward trends can be seen years before the global health crisis. It leads to a question about a decade of disappointing results for American students.

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The reportmentioned that data was taken from the NAEP in the fall of 2022 and the main aim of the test was to analyse the basic reading skills, in which the 13-year-olds scored an average of 256 out of 500 in reading, and a basic math score returned scores of 271 out of 500.

According to NYT, declines were noted across race, class and geographic lines. However, children from vulnerable communities, including Black, Native American, and poor families, have reportedly experienced more severe drops.

The report mentioned that the ages of 10 to 13 are a crucial period for mastering foundational skills as children learn some of the basic skills like multiplication, adding, and more without using calculators.

As quoted by NYT, Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which conducts the NAEP exam, said: "The bottom line — these results show that there are troubling gaps in the basic skills of these students. This is a huge-scale challenge that faces the nation."

As quoted by USA Today, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said, "The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress is further evidence of what the Biden-Harris administration recognized from Day One: that the pandemic would have a devastating impact on students’ learning across the country and that it would take years of effort and investment to reverse the damage as well as address the 11-year decline that preceded it."

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