‘Students in 2022 are performing at a level last seen two decades ago,’ an official with the Education Department’s research arm said after the data was released.
New federal data – the first comparing academic achievement from before the coronavirus pandemic to now – shows unprecedented drops in math and reading scores and the largest setbacks for students in more than half a century.
“These are some of the largest declines we have observed in a single assessment cycle in 50 years,” said Daniel McGrath, the acting associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the Education Department’s research arm. “Students in 2022 are performing at a level last seen two decades ago.”
Declines in math and reading hardly come as a surprise given the significant academic setbacks that have been widely documented as a result of interrupted learning during the coronavirus pandemic.
