Dear John,

We started this New Reality Roundup four and a half years ago to ensure that the crisis facing our students was front and center and to put a spotlight on the extraordinary response needed to help get our kids back on track. This morning we got another shocking result that drives home just how damaging the pandemic era has been for America’s students. 

In this special edition of the Roundup, we provide some quick reactions and links to the early write-ups of the newly released results from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a major international assessment administered in 64 countries and involving more than 600,000 fourth and eighth grade students. The test is given every four years and these are the first results since the pandemic.

The results are clear: student achievement in the US has plunged since the pandemic and these big drops are largest among students who were already the furthest behind. 

You can follow us on X for updates throughout the day as this story unfolds. 

Best,


Marc Porter Magee, PhD
50CAN Founder and CEO

 @marcportermagee

Reactions from friends of the Roundup

Here is what Liz Cohen, Policy Director at FutureEd, told us this morning:

“The drop in math scores is deeply troubling. These results make clear that the urgency felt both in the education sector and in the American public to invest in and rethink education in the early days of the pandemic should remain as high today as it was in 2020. ESSER funds may be over but the need to take urgent action to boost student learning is not. As state legislative sessions heat up, there’s an opportunity for states to invest even more in solutions that are already working for kids. There are schools and districts that are beating the odds, whose achievement is improving. We should look to those proof points for what’s possible.”

Here is what Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion, shared on X this morning:

“The relative under-performance of American schools compared to schools in England over the last 5-10 years is something every American (and frankly everyone in England) should be studying. Going to be writing about this soon but England:
 

• Early commitment to phonics screening 
• Transition of the profession to nearly universal understanding of the importance cognitive science
• Broad (across subject) deeper (more rigorous) assessments with student stake (ie GCSE)
• Commitment to knowledge-based curriculum
• Broad parent and teacher choice
• Less tendency to confuse authority with authoritarianism”

And one final observation from Brandon Brown, the CEO of the Mind Trust:

“It’s clear that many policies over the last several years that were cloaked in the language of equity were actually devastatingly harmful for the very children those policies claimed to serve.”

Chalkbeat, “U.S. math scores drop on major international test,” by Erica Meltzer

“U.S. fourth graders saw their math scores drop steeply between 2019 and 2023 on a key international test even as more than a dozen other countries saw their scores improve. Scores dropped even more steeply for American eighth graders … These are the first TIMSS results since the COVID response disrupted education around the world …Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said the NAEP results two years ago were ‘devastating,’ and the TIMSS results are ‘just as devastating.’ ‘I would call these declines sharp, steep declines,’ she said … ‘We have countries leapfrogging over us,’ Carr said … Scores for the highest performing American fourth graders were about the same as in 2019, but the lowest performing students — those in the bottom 10% — saw their scores drop by 37 points in math and by 22 points in science compared with similar students in 2019. The lowest performing eighth graders saw their scores drop by 19 points in math. One in five U.S. eighth graders scored below the low benchmark, meaning they lacked even basic proficiency. The steep decline among students who struggle the most in school drove much of the decrease in U.S. test scores, Carr said … Schools where principals reported fewer discipline problems and more emphasis on academic success had higher average test scores.”
 

Wall Street Journal, “Global Test Scores Show U.S. Students Still Struggling After Pandemic,” By Matt Barnum

“American students’ math scores took a bigger hit from the pandemic than their peers overseas, according to a closely watched international exam … U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students’ math performance on a big worldwide test fell between 2023 and 2019, the last time the test was administered. America’s rankings slipped relative to other countries … Research has linked school closures to greater learning loss, and the U.S. had a higher duration of at least partial school closures than many other countries, including all of Europe, according to a Unesco analysis … Countries whose performance moved ahead of the U.S. included Finland in math, England in science, and Poland for both subjects in fourth grade … Tom Kane, a Harvard University professor who has tracked learning loss, said recovery efforts—which often have included small group tutoring, summer and after-school programming, and additional teachers and other staff—were simply too small relative to the scale of the problem.”