Most New Jersey students are still behind in math four years after the coronavirus pandemic began, according to a study by Harvard and Stanford University researchers who measured school districts across the country using a common scale. It is said that there is
And a report commissioned by the Murphy administration and released this month said New Jersey schoolchildren suffered greater learning loss in math skills than reading skills during the pandemic. A report compiled by Boston Consulting Group and a law firm examines the state's response to the coronavirus and says the losses would have been much lower if schools had reopened individually earlier. ing.
The state-commissioned report examines math and reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a state-administered test, in 2019 and 2022 before the pandemic began and after the health emergency ends. The learning loss was measured by comparing the .
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Eighth graders showed the steepest drop in math, 11 points, compared to the national average 8-point drop in NAEP math scores.
The state recognized this in October 2022, but efforts by lawmakers to force the Department of Education to formally target learning loss have failed. State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), the Senate majority leader, is sponsoring a four-piece bill to create a learning loss leader within the department, currently led by Angelica Allen.・After the retirement of former Acting Secretary McMillan, Kevin Demmer has assumed the role of Secretary. In January.
Lewis said the state is not addressing the issue with any urgency. A year and a half later, most New Jersey students are still far behind.
The Harvard and Stanford University study, called the Educational Recovery Scorecard, looked at New Jersey Student Learning Assessment test scores to examine academic recovery.
If New Jersey schoolchildren continue to catch up at their current pace, it will take another three years for New Jersey schoolchildren to return to 2019 levels of performance in math, the authors of the Harvard and Stanford University study said.
With the final round of federal coronavirus relief funds set to expire in October, school leaders have just a few months left to rethink their spending plans. Study authors from Harvard University and Stanford University said schools should direct any remaining federal funding to remediation programs.
Students in high-poverty districts have lost critical learning skills.
Research shows that many high-poverty areas, including New Brunswick, Paterson, and Newark, lost more than a full year of grade-level learning in mathematics between 2019 and 2022. Ta. Paterson City he decreased by 1.22 points. 1 point means the amount of learning equivalent to 1 grade. Meanwhile, the city of Passaic lost about half a year of learning in math. In 2023, the vote share in both districts was only 0.09 points.
In comparison, New Milford lost very little math learning, by just 0.19 points. In the more affluent suburb of Ridgewood, math learning decreased by 0.44 points, less than half a year's worth. School districts vary in size, income level, and number of students served.
Some districts are outliers. Union City in Hudson County, an urban, predominantly Hispanic city, lost much of its ground in mathematics, as did suburban Monroe Township in Middlesex County.
Thomas Cain, an economist and lead researcher at Harvard University, said saying just that math scores have declined in New Jersey is an oversimplification and could be misleading to parents. States now have a duty to let students know how far behind they are in the spring.
“As federal relief funding dries up, state leaders must ensure that remaining funds are used to expand learning opportunities through tutoring and after-school contracts in summer 2024 and next year,” Cain said.
“Parents think their kids haven't lost much momentum because they see the school buses running again and think everything is fine. They think, wait a minute, this The kids are 6 months old or a year behind where they would have been at this point before the pandemic.”
“It's really important to let parents know now, before school starts this summer, because we're about to run out of dollars,” he said. “We want as many parents as possible to know this spring rather than waiting for state test scores to come back.”
Cain said New Jersey students have significantly improved their reading scores since the pandemic, recouping nearly half of the losses caused by the pandemic. “If this trend continues this year, average reading scores across the state should return to 2019 levels this spring,” he said.
The “gap” in the performance of marginalized students
A state-commissioned report said the pandemic widened the existing achievement gap between affluent, mostly white suburban students and lower-income Black and Hispanic students into a “chasm.”
The urban, low-income school district did not have laptops and internet access available to all students during the early months of school closures in spring 2020. Urban school districts were also among the slowest to return to full-time in-person instruction, even after school closures were complete. We provided technology to students.
The report says that extended periods of learning in hybrid and virtual schools will lead to significant declines in learning ability, with students in urban areas being the most affected.
In the 2020-21 school year, 51% of Black students and 47% of Hispanic students lived in remote areas, compared to 30% of Asian students and 19% of white students in the state.
The Department of Education did not comment on the findings of the state-commissioned study.
“That's what it is,” Phil Murphy said on WNYC's “Ask Governor Murphy” radio show when asked about learning loss due to school closures and mask mandates.
States like Florida “rolled the dice,” he said. In August 2020, the state of Florida mandated that schools remain open and continue in-person classes. Meanwhile, New Jersey directed school districts to continue with in-person or remote instruction in September 2020, as appropriate, and to follow COVID-19 mitigation measures such as social distancing. And test.
Although New Jersey remains a top-performing state, its score has declined compared to the national NAEP average. Florida's decline remained above the national average, as did Illinois and California, which followed New Jersey's mitigation strategies.
Schools were closed by President Murphy's executive order in March 2020, but full in-person reopening was not ordered until fall 2021.
“The challenge is that we have over 600 districts and all the issues and dynamics that come with local realities,” Murphy said on the broadcast. “I spent a lot of time pleading with superintendents and principals to get them on track to fully reopen.” …Not surprisingly, the schools that remained remote the longest were the largest. I have a problem. ”
A state study praised New Jersey as a national model for providing free meals to schoolchildren in the poorest neighborhoods early in the pandemic. But the Department of Education was unable to coordinate among hundreds of school districts to measure academic progress during the 2020-21 school year, when standardized tests were suspended.
The report said the governor's office could have acted more quickly to notify schools of the 2020 closure period. The report also said that although the state acted quickly to close the digital gap, poorer districts lacked the technology needed to switch to distance learning in the early months.