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What Next - Should You Panic Over America's Test Scores?

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

Business, News, Society & Culture

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

According to the recently released results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, American students across the country are scoring lower on math and reading. But before we panic, it’s important to put those results in context, and consider what evaluations can actually tell us.


Guest: Jack Schneider, associate professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and co-host of the education policy podcast “Have You Heard.”


If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.


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Transcript

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1:04.4

Last week, these numbers came out. And alarming and historic setback for America's young students.

1:10.9

They revealed the impact COVID had on kids in school. Across the country, test scores dropped

1:17.6

and significantly during the pandemic. The math results were especially alarming. Only 26 percent

1:24.0

of eighth graders were proficient or above in math. The drop in reading just wiped out three

1:29.8

decades of academic gains. The education secretary. There's a term educators use for what's

1:34.8

happened here. Learning loss. Jack Schneider, who studies education at the University of Massachusetts,

1:41.9

he hates this phrase. I think that it's a really misleading term.

1:45.8

I think that when people hear that, the first thing that they are going to think is that

1:54.7

knowledge got knocked out of kids' heads. Right, that individual students have ended up knowing

2:01.7

less and being able to do less than they were able to do prior to the pandemic. And that just isn't the case.

2:10.1

Well, I think a lot of us understand that knowledge has not been suctioned out of our kids' brains.

...

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