The New York Times recently published an article by Thomas Kane of Harvard and Sean Reardon of Stanford lamenting that parents had no idea how much the pandemic had set back their children’s education. (“Parents Don’t Understand How Far Behind Their Kids Are in School”). Most parents, when asked, respond optimistically that they expect their children to bounce back from whatever academic losses they suffered.
Kane and Reardon think it’s time to dash their optimism. First, there are the NAEP scores showing setbacks in reading, math, and history. “By the spring of 2022, according to our calculations, the average student was half a year behind in math and a third of a year behind in reading.”
Working with researchers from other institutions, they reviewed data from 7,800 communities in 41 states, where 26 million students are enrolled, about 80% of all students in public K-8 schools.
Their biggest conclusion: “The pandemic exacerbated economic and racial educational inequality.” Also: “test scores declined more in districts where schools were closed longer” but “Students fell behind even in places where schools closed very briefly…” However, “the educational impacts of the pandemic were not driven solely by what was happening (or not happening) in schools. The disruption in children’s lives outside of school also mattered: the constriction of their social lives, the stress their parents were feeling, the death of family members, the signals that the world was not safe and the very real fear that you or someone you love might get very sick and die.”
There is much more to read and ponder in the article.
I sent the article to my esteemed friend David Berliner, who is widely recognized as the nation’s pre-eminent education research expert.
Dr. Berliner kindly replied:
Dear Diane,
I am afraid that medical issues for both me and my wife will keep me from a formal response to the nonsense that was produced by two extraordinary researchers. Their credentials and analysis are perfect. I respect their analytic skills—but if you’ll excuse my Yiddish, they have no sechel. [Editor’s note: “sechel,” roughly translated, is common sense.] Let’s look at what they conclude.
- Kids who miss a lot of school do less well on tests of what they learned in school. DUH! I really think I could have predicted that!
- Parents who are with their kids many hours per week think their kids are recovering nicely, but these researchers, who never assess a real live kid, say the parents are wrong. That is not wise, if you ask me.
- Given the history of NAEP, it appears that the kids today will be back where kids were a few years back on tests like NAEP, and the loss probably extends to all the state tests and even PISA may show it. But,…. those kids who scored lower a few years ago, and whose todays’ kids match by their lower test scores, have helped the US economy remain one of the strongest in the world. Those lower test scoring kids of the previous decades helped make America hum. Why won’t today’s kids, with the same level of formal school knowledge, do the same?
Furthermore, we have the Flynn effect in IQ—today’s kids are well above their grandparents in IQ and their grandparent didn’t have nearly as much schooling as today’s kids. And still the economy hummed. American kids are “smarter” than ever if you believe that is what is measured with IQ tests.
Furthermore again, the wonderful 8-year study, which you know quite well, showed that kids who missed a lot of their traditional high school education not only did fine in college but excelled. The kids of many families, surely the better educated families, who missed a lot of formal schooling did not miss all of their education—they just got a different one, and it is not clear that they will be hampered forever because of that.
Among the authors speculations, is raised the question of a 13th high school year. But public schools are terribly underfunded now, so where the hell is there going to be money for a 13th year, or for an additional year of junior high, or more days of schooling per year, or summer school for all? More days of school means more expenditure of funds and I don’t think America has the money, or the will, to allocate such money.
And would colleges reject this generation of kids, as the authors worry about? Naw! The elites are always rejecting the talented but lower scoring kids as well as the kids whose families can’t make some part of the tuition. These two researchers are at Harvard and Stanford, and I seriously doubt if their freshman classes will be “less” smart. Getting full tuition out of parents, not just assessing student credentials, seems to have a lot more sway in the decisions of many higher education institutions than we want to admit. It is also quite noticeable that college enrollments have been falling dramatically over the last few years, so the way I see it is that if you take the time and put in the energy to apply to a college, you stand a really good chance of getting into some place reputable, even if your SATS or GRE’s are few points lower on average than the freshman class of, say, 2018.
Diane, you and I both remember when Ivan was going to wipe the economic floor with the progeny of Joe six-pack. Or when Akito in Japan was going to wipe the same economic floor with Joe’s progeny. Now its Li in China who will do so. But somehow, we Americans muddle through. I bet we will again.
Should we worry. Sure. But I just can’t get excited about this creative, well-done study, with zero policy options that make sense.
My conclusion is that American kids are behind where they were. OK. Attending school again will catch them up. No big deal.
The real issue is that many kids were already way behind, and they seem to almost all have a major character flaw…. they are poor! That’s Americas’ real problem, not a slightly lower score on a current state test whose predictive power of future achievements and earnings is quite limited.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bravo!
“American kids are “smarter” than ever if you believe that is what is measured with IQ tests.”
Nothing is “measured with IQ tests”.
IQ = Bullshit.
Is it learning loss or instruction loss? Dyslexia kids and other struggling readers have had instruction loss for decades under teachers using Whole Word, Whole Language or Balanced Literacy approaches. Don’t blame the kids. Don’t blame the teachers, blame the teaching colleges and the policies that guide them. Studies the body of research that the Science of Reading is built on and make sure the teachers use evidence-based programs built on this science.
Debbie, I strongly support teaching phonics. I also strongly believe there is literally no such thing as the “science of reading.” This SOR nonsense started with the “National Reading Panel” assembled by Reid Lyon. It included only one person with experience teaching reading. The others were college professors. The teacher wrote a stinging dissent. Based on the report, NCLB included a billion dollar program called Reading First. Heavy on phonics, phonemes, etc. evaluations showed the program made no difference. Also it was scandal-ridden.
Reid Lyon was George W. Bush’s personal education advisor. Bush and Texas have long been committees to the “science of reading.”
Further reading on “The science of reading”:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/understanding-zombie
The dissenting opinion of Joanne Yatvin, the only veteran teacher-principal on the panel:
Click to access YatvinMinorityView.00.pdf
I strongly support that students should have access to the alphabetic code of English (or any alphabetic language) by building phonemic and phonological awareness and explicit instruction in decoding words by syllable type and other rules. They should get to practice fluency first on connected text with the rules they have been taught and when they have mastered enough codes and rules, on texts with increasing difficulty. This should all be supported by language knowledge (syntax, semantics, grammar, metaphor, idioms, appositives, etc). This should be further supported by learning content and gaining subject knowledge and vocabulary through hands-on work, audio books, read-alouds and even podcasts and videos.
There are scientists continuing to study how children learn to read. They are educators, educational psychologists, linguists, and speech pathologists and this body of knowledge continues to grow, and debunk what doesn’t work. Haphazard phonics do not work. Cueing via pictures or other parts of a passage. Guessing doesn’t work. Fluency work on codes that have not been taught doesn’t work.
Debbie,
I am disappointed in this reply.
Any scientist who claims to have “debunked” that it “doesn’t work” to NOT have 5 and 6 year olds being bored out of their mind because they are forced to do the kinds of phonics lessons you require is a fraud.
At my kid’s school, there were very many kids reading above grade level books they loved and understood. All taught reading via the programs you decry.
But of course there were students for whom it didn’t work.
Why not just say that whether or not ANY reading program works for a kid is entirely dependent on a myriad of factors, including how that particular kid responds to that program and what is going on in that particular kid’s life that might impact him responding to ANY reading program.
A smart, loving, open minded teacher who isn’t brainwashed into believing that science has “proved” that some reading program works, so it’s the kid’s own fault it doesn’t work (or the teacher’s), is the reading program that works for ALL kids.
Sorting K-8 students by birth year is junk science.
I could only imagine what high school Americans would do if it was announced they were going to take a year longer to graduate. I would not want to be in their schools the day of the announcement…Oh, on an anecdotal note: My dad graduated from high school in 1936 after “skipping” two grades 1-12, a common practice on those days. He graduated from Chapel Hill on time in 1940. Part of the “greatest generation.” Just think what he could have done if he had attended school for those two years he missed.
School shutdown proponents truly will never allow themselves to be seen having a single second thought. Not one.
I don’t know how long schools should have been shut down. I wonder how many lives—teachers, staff, administrators—were saved by the shutdowns. I guess we will never know, although theoretically one could gather data about death rates of staff and length of closure.
Good morning Diane and everyone,
I think we have to remember that schools shut down when there was NO vaccine or effective treatments available or known. Just think about that. A new virus. Doctors were just learning how to treat it. There was controversy over mask effectiveness and what kinds of masks, etc. It was March so flu season was still going on. I have to say that if I were a parent, I would have wanted my child to be out of a school situation where he or she would be exposed to many people. As a parent, I would have tried to help my child be involved in learning as best I could and try to help him or her learn to enjoy solitude. As a teacher, I must say that I was glad to be away from large groups of people. I wonder what will happen if we move away from requiring vaccinations and diseases like polio make a return. So, I guess we erred on the side of caution, and sometimes that’s what has to be done.
FLERP!,
School open proponents truly will never allow themselves to be seen having a single second thought. Not one.
Because they can’t imagine what it is like to live in small, multi-generational households sharing a single bathroom. They can’t imagine why – in NYC public schools – it was the affluent parents demanding schools be opened, while many first generation families were not.
Even when schools were re-opened, the schools that had high percentages of first generation kids often had high percentages of students who wore masks despite it being “optional”. And it was interesting to see how many other students whose parents didn’t care either way and teachers would also wear masks TO RESPECT THE OTHER STUDENTS for whom bringing home covid could have a much greater impact on their family.
Schools re-opened when there was more understanding of covid, better treatments, and vaccines.
In short, schools stayed close when there was still a danger of a huge pandemic where health care was overwhelmed with cases and that means that anyone getting any illness or injury was more at risk. ESPECIALLY families who aren’t privileged, who made up most public school students.
Some of us don’t appreciate what it means for many families in urban areas who live in very small multigenerational households.
It is very different even than rural areas and certainly different than suburban areas and in cities where private schools teach mostly privileged students.
Although since most of the elite private schools were also closed, what is your theory about that? That they put their own teachers’ needs above the needs of their students?
And hindsight is 20/20. No one knew how bad it could get, erring on the side of caution was valid choice when BOTH choices are bad.
“No one knew how bad it could get, erring on the side of caution was valid choice when BOTH choices are bad.” Agreed!
Hear Hear! Even now, COVID and other public health issues are economic issues. Who can take off from work and care for their familyn and who can’t risk missing a shift at work because of the loss of income or perhaps the loss of a job?
Unlike statistics, one lesson I learned from observing students that were severely “behind” in academics is that learning is not linear. It happens through peaks, valleys and plateaus. Statistical models cannot reliably predict the future, particularly with regard to learning. Diane’s conclusion that Covid magnified our existing inequities is a much more reasonable statement that can be inferred from the data. Economists should refrain from gloom and doom predictions and making unsubstantiated projections about learning which is not their area of expertise. We can get the same inaccurate conclusions from looking into a crystal ball.
Thanks. It was the researchers’ conclusion, not mine. Not surprising.
Here’s what I know…the world really didn’t care when teachers told them, “We need to teach our students in a different way…we need to give them options for learning…” And this was all before Covid. Covid exasperated an already existing issue. The students I taught came back from the “Arizona Circle” (I believe that is the term) just in time for testing. Other students I had were absent from school for close to a year, but we took them in. My cousin was extremely bright, yet cut school for a long time. Another student told me, “Charvet school is boring. It is full of a lot of ‘BS’ assignments I refuse to do, therefore I fail.” I assessed his writing and he was at college level. He could “ace” tests without studying because he could analyze what was asked and provide the correct answer. He went on to become the Student Body President of our local community college. Another student was failed because he didn’t do the homework, but could pass the exams with 90-100 percent. I always thought HW was to reinforce concepts on tests. So…geez…I just look at education waaaay differently. Students are resilient if the proper “bricks” are put back into place building a proper foundation. Before Covid, many instructors were “racing through the books” to finish it by year’s end. Comprehension. “Hey, if you can’t keep up, too bad.” My son was so “ticked off” that his AP US History class never got to the 21 Century information that was on his AP test. He told me, “A lot of what was on the test, we never learned” circa 2006.” And, for me, I learned so much by walking along the trail down by our creek. So, what constitutes learning? Just what is on the test? But forget about painting, drawing, martial arts, gardening, watching and identifying birds, learning bird calls, frog mating calls, and a whole lot more. Kids get so beaten down when they “don’t get it” but they are brilliant many other areas that never appear on the test. Moreover, I remember the kids having to take a “bullying test.” Because THERE WAS a bullying problem. They kept telling me, “Mr. Charvet why do we have to take this test?” I told them, “It is mandated for you all to take it so you get the help you need because of all the bullies.” They said (and mind you these are at-risk kids) “How do I answer this if I have never been bullied? And almost in unison. There is no choice for me to say I have not been bullied.” There wasn’t. All kids had to take the test and could not answer “not bullied.” Once again, those people who “advertise a problem” will create a problem and monies that could have been used to create some really phenomenal art programs or career technical programs get ousted. My friend said, “Dude, it’s like this. See your books. They are in order, right?” He then slapped them so they were in disarray. “Dude, we need to have department meeting about keeping your books in order to maintain a positive learning environment. Dude, even if there isn’t a problem, we create issues to make it a problem.” The list goes on and on. To this day, I still shake my head.
You’re correct! Covid exacerbated the problems. The Economists who are cherry picking data are just looking for non existent problems so that they can sell something to the parents that they have terrified. I really think that a lot of parents can now see through the charade and they are tired….and they are tired of their children being used as a marketing scheme.
I came into teaching as a second career. Every year there was a “new thing” and a “new guru” to follow. We had everything. Such pure BS. Nearly all the kids told me, “We don’t learn this way; I wish they would LISTEN to us or give us a bit more time instead of yelling at us.” I remember attending a professional development day and we had to introduce ourselves. It was the typical, “I am this.. I do this…blah, blah, blah, crap.” One guy started off by saying, “I teach science, and well, none of my kids can read so that’s great.” I said to myself, “Why do that? You don’t think these kids have been told numerous times they are “dumbasses?” Dude, are you a teacher? Then teach your kids to read while they learn science.” So many of my students told me, “Charvet, I am a F-up, so why should I try?” I said, “Because this time you will be a winner and life isn’t about what’s on a test. And check this out, how many of the smart kids even know how to fix a car or get a job or know how to vote (my son was in an AP class, but they hadn’t mentioned how to register to vote) but my “dumb asses” were registered and knew the propositions. My heart hurt for their spirits, but in the end one of my “dumbasses” and “delinquents” as I heard people call them, just opened a tap room downtown. So, once again, what is learning? What does it mean to be educated? What constitutes being ready to survive in the world? All, of which, can be applied to any discipline IF one decides that is it important, well, because it’s not on the test. Egads. The sky is falling, right? And, in sum, I see my kids all over town working good jobs. I say, “Remember how THEY reminded you how you would amount to nothing?” See, I told you to not listen to the “HATERS” and you kids would be alright.” I end with this,
The Rose That Grew From Concrete
Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.
Hear, hear. But the Repubs will try to make hay out of that research as their agenda is the gutting of “government schools.” They will pay no attention to the common sense of Dr. Berliner above.
And the Dems won’t take a stand and get rid of the testing industry and the Common Bore nonsense curriculum that is tied to the tests. Both sides are the criminals of this injustice toward children. This is why there is so much voucher discussion lately. This is what drives parents into the private school systems.
I think learning loss among some children during the pandemic is the fault of the parents of those, not teachers, not COVID.
When compared to the influence of teachers, parents are the most powerful role models, by far, at home when it comes to instilling a love of reading and life long learning in their children, — not teachers.
Look no further than Finland for proof of what I think. In Finland, most if not all parents insure that their children learn to read at home before they start school at age 7, and most if not all children when they start school in Finland are already reading at or above grade level.
How I learned to love reading came from my parents, not any of the teachers I had K-12, Both of my parents were high school drop outs thanks to the Great Depression but they were also avid readers. I grew up seeing them reading books every night.
Before I barely graduated from high school with a 0.95 GPA, I’d already read hundreds if not thousands of books: history, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy. Instead of paying attention in most of my classes, i was sitting in the back reading those library books, ignoring what the teacher was teaching, what the classwork was, explaining my GPA at graduation.
Yet, when I got out of the Marines in 1968 and started college on the GI Bill, the community college I went to, tested me to see if I needed what’s called bone-head English and I tested at the college level for reading. My K-12 teachers were not responsible for that. My parents were.
Oh Common Sense where have you been? Kids missed school, a lot of school. They will catch up over time, NOT in a short time. Anyone that thinks that is a must has their head in the toilet. It’s not necessary, but more importantly it’s not possible to catch them up in a short time. Why not? Just look at our record of remediating at-risk kids who have fallen behind for so many reasons. We haven’t broken that code. Kids learn at their own pace. Cramming it down kids throats is like starting kindergarten at 3 yrs old, or teaching 1st graders 3 gr curriculums, or teaching 2grades worth of curr in one year. STOP it, kids need us to show common sense! Thank you David Berliner!
Of cooourse, the pandemic made us A Nation at Risk because, as Arne Dunkin Basketballs said, suburban moms don’t know how stupid their children are. Therefore, we need to accept the supremacy of the master class, work harder, longer, and for less pay. All hail Bill Gates!
David Berliner mentioned NAEP and NAEP scores.
NAEP, as much as it is touted as the “gold standard,” is not a very good “barometer of academic learning.” Virtually everybody who’s studied the NAEP proficiency standards finds them badly flawed and unusable.
Berliner also mentioned the Eight-Year Study. That study, focused on secondary education, was rigorously researched, and could provide some helpful hints to real reform.
http://www.8yearstudy.org/
Here are some selected excerpts:
“… education in the United States did not have clear-cut, definite, central purpose”
“Schools failed to give students a sincere appreciation of their heritage as American citizens. ”
“…secondary schools did not prepare adequately for the responsibilities of community life.”
“The High school seldom challenged the student of first-rate ability to work up to the level of his intellectual powers. ”
“Schools neither knew their students well nor guided them wisely.”
“Schools failed to create conditions necessary for effective learning.”
“The conventional high school curriculum was far removed front the real concerns of youth.”
“Most principals were constantly busy just “running the machine”; they seldom stopped long enough to ask themselves, Why are we doing this or that? What are we driving at? Where are we going?”
Do any, or all, of these quotes, sound familiar today?
They should.
In essence, the Eight-Year Study was a plan to take a group of schools and free them from the traditional curriculum. In these schools, “the general life of the school and methods of teaching should conform to what is now known about the ways in which human beings learn and grow.” Educators and community members “realized that many changes in ways of teaching, as well as in organization and curriculum, were necessary if attendance at school was to become the stimulating, meaningful experience it could be for each student.”
As one principal noted, “My teachers and I do not know what to do with this freedom. It challenges and frightens us. I fear that we have come to love our chains.”
Yet, those involved in the study “recognized their responsibility for measuring, recording, and in reporting the results of their work.” They realized that they were trying to”develop students who regard education as an enduring quest for meanings.” In that sense, the participants were confident that they could change education, and “perhaps the chief reason for confidence in the schools’ use of freedom is to be found in the genuine sense of responsibility which most teachers feel. They are conscious of the far-reaching consequences of their work.”
The follow-up evaluation of how graduates from the experimental schools did in college compared to graduates of traditional schools “found that the graduates from the participating schools in the study earned slightly higher grades; appeared more intellectually curious, objective in their thinking, and resourceful; received slightly more academic honors in each year; were more often judged to possess a high degree of intellectual curiosity and drive; were more often judged to be precise, systematic, and objective in their thinking; more often demonstrated a high degree of resourcefulness in meeting new situations; earned in each college year a higher percentage on on-academic honors; demonstrated a more active concern for what was going on in the world.”
As Berliner noted, one thing NAEP seems to measure fairly well is income inequality. Or, to put it a bit more precisely, research has found that between half and two-thirds of the variance in student academic performance on NAEP is explained by a cumulative family risk factor, which includes family income, the educational attainment of parents, family and neighborhood housing conditions, and the ability to speak and read English.
Are there “gaps between students from low-income families and their more affluent peers.” Well, of course there are.
As Richard Rothstein pointed out nearly two decades ago,
“two researchers from the University of Kansas, visited families from different social classes to monitor the conversations between parents and toddlers. [They] found that, on average, professional parents spoke more than 2,000 words per hour to their children, working-class parents
spoke about 1,300, and welfare mothers spoke about 600. So by age 3, the children of professionals had vocabularies that were nearly 50 percent greater than those of working class children and twice as large as those of welfare children.”
“Deficits like these cannot be made up by schools alone, no matter how high the teachers’ expectations. For all children to achieve the same goals, the less advantaged would have to enter school with verbal fluency that is similar to the fluency of middle-class children.”
https://nypost.com/2023/05/20/55-of-nyc-12th-graders-chronically-absent-post-covid/
FLERP!,
You are correct to blame Mayor Adams and not the schools for this, according to your link.
“If the mayor focused on housing people, I’d have more kids in school. I have so many homeless students. And a lot of my students in public housing have been missing due to a lack of running water. Hygiene keeps them away.”