From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernici and this is The Daily.

On the first nationwide test of American students in the pandemic, scores plummeted to levels

not seen in 20 years.

Today, I speak to my colleague Sarah Mervash on what the scores tell us about remote learning

and on how schools are now scrambling to help students recover.

It's Monday, November 14th.

Sarah, hi.

Hi, Sabrina.

So the last time we worked together was during the early months of the pandemic and I remember

that there was this really heated debate going on over schools and what teaching remotely

would mean for students.

And it sounds like now we're getting some answers on what we were all guessing at back

them.

Yeah, that was one of the most heated debates of the pandemic.

It animated so many parents and teachers.

It was unprecedented to have schools across the country shut down for months and then

going into the next school year.

It was a question of when to open, how long to stay remote.

And as we know, different states and different places took different paths.

And now as time has gone on, we have some more insights into how kids did fare during the

pandemic.

And one of the clearest insights we have is this key national test and the results are

...