BUFFALO, N.Y. — School districts across the Buffalo-Niagara area may just be starting to return, but schools already have their first report card — the nation’s report card by the National Center for Education. The report is the first study of its kind that compares where fourth graders were at the beginning of the pandemic to now. It shows test scores have hit historic lows.
“Despite the fact that kids suffered the least serious COVID-related symptoms, they suffered the greatest under COVID-related restrictions and requirements,” said Erie-Niagara School Superintendents President Mike Cornell.
According to the report, since spring of 2019, students' math scores have dropped seven points, marking a first-ever decline, and reading scores have gone down five points, producing the largest dip in 30 years.
These are drastic setbacks for the nation’s education system, as students’ test scores are now on par with statistics from nearly two decades ago.
“Anybody who's been paying attention knows that the remote learning and the COVID years were not good for student achievement, and they were especially difficult for those that were on remote learning,” said Mark Laurrie, the Superintendent of Niagara Falls City School District.
Laurrie says while all students have been impacted, some demographics have been hit harder than others.
“The Black and Hispanic communities were the ones that really were more apt to be on remote learning,” he said. “There was a lot of concern in those communities about the disease, a lot of sometimes misinformation, a lot of lack of communication to those populations about the disease.”
The report shows Black and Hispanic students saw the most significant drops of 13 percentage points and 8 percentage points, respectively, compared to 5 percentage points for white students. However, decreases were more uniform in reading, falling 6 percentage points for all three populations.
These are drops that some educators like Andrew Genco, a fourth-grade teacher at St. Joseph University School in Buffalo, say don’t tell the whole story.
“I think it's just one test can't really say how education is,” he said. “Education isn't at its worst in 20 years. It's one test, and I guess we really have to wait and see over the next five years to see if things jump back up.”
School leaders believe that jump back will come at each student’s own pace.
“What we're looking for is continuous growth,” Laurrie said, “Growth from where you're at to where you need to be, and we'll get there. We will get there, but it's about day to day growth.”