High school students have been the slowest to recover
Students in D.C. made modest gains on standardized tests last school year — a glimmer of hope following a pandemic-era plunge, but a sobering reminder that children are still struggling in the wake of the public health crisis.
About 34 percent of test-takers are reading at or above grade level, an increase from 31 percent in 2022. The share of students who met or exceeded expectations in math grew about three percentage points, from 19 percent in 2022 — the lowest ever recorded in D.C. — to nearly 22 percent this spring.
Officials said the results of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test — more commonly known as PARCC — show that the city’s efforts to help students gain the academic ground they lost are working. Students in grades three through eight and high school take the online exam in the spring, as required by federal law.
But the scores also signal that students haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, 37 percent of students were reading at or above grade level, and 31 percent passed the math exam. Students were not tested in 2020 or 2021.
“What we know is that the pandemic had a significant impact on our children and teens, but we also know that with the right supports and with our tremendous educators who are ready to love and challenge students on day one, we can keep students moving in the right direction,” D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said in a statement. More than 45,000 students participated in either PARCC or an alternative assessment for students with cognitive disabilities, representing a 95 percent participation rate and an increase from 43,000 test-takers in 2022.
Officials credit the incremental improvements this year to a mixture of interventions designed to get students back on track, including tutoring, math and reading training for educators, new instructional materials and mental health support for students.
The city has provided high-impact tutoring, which consists of consistent and small-group instruction, to more than 5,200 students with the greatest academic need. The goal is to put 10,000 students through the program by September 2024.
Many efforts, however, were funded by a one-time influx of federal coronavirus money known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER. The final round of that funding expires in September 2024.
Christina Grant, D.C.’s state superintendent of education, said leaders are closely examining which efforts work best and are worthy of long-term investment after ESSER money dries up. Paul Kihn, deputy mayor for education, noted recent boosts in local funding for schools, including a 5.05 percent increase to the city’s per-pupil funding formula and $20 million in recovery dollars.
“We’ve been investing local dollars in order to mitigate that cliff as well,” Kihn said.
The improvements in reading scores were evident across most groups, data show, but proficiency rates still lag after a pandemic that chipped away at earlier progress.
About 23 percent of Black children are reading at or above grade level, up from 20 percent in 2022 but down from about 28 percent in 2019. Nearly 32 percent of Hispanic and Latino students meet the same benchmark, a modest improvement from nearly 31 percent in 2022 but a drop from 37 percent in 2019.
Math scores, meanwhile, went up or remained roughly the same for every race and student group. But, again, students have not yet recuperated from the pandemic.
In 2019, 21 percent of Black children and nearly 79 percent of White children could perform math at or above grade level. Those figures fell to 11 percent for Black students and about 75 percent for White students last school year — representing not only lower scores, but also widening performance gaps.
Meanwhile, across grade bands, middle-schoolers experienced the largest gains in reading on PARCC, improving scores by 4.5 percentage points between 2022 and 2023. Scores for children in third through fifth grades rose 2.8 percentage points. High-schoolers showed a 0.2 percentage point increase in reading scores.
In math, elementary school students demonstrated a 4.2 percentage point jump and middle school test-takers improved by 2.3 percentage points. High school students, again, remained somewhat stagnant with a 0.2 percentage point increase. In 2019, 18.4 percent of high-schoolers were proficient in math. That figure now stands at a little over 11 percent.
Officials explained some of the stagnation in upper grades by pointing to spotty attendance among high-schoolers — an ongoing challenge for schools districts across the country — and bad timing. The city’s oldest students missed out on crucial learning that normally happens in middle school.
“Not having the middle school experience and going directly into ninth and 10th grade certainly had an impact on our ability to foster an environment where they can thrive at maximum levels,” said Lewis D. Ferebee, chancellor of D.C.’s traditional public school system.
Middle school students, meanwhile, had critical early literacy and math skills under their belts by the time they took their exams, he added.
Ferebee also outlined some of his plans for improving his 50,000-student district this year, including a heavier focus on Algebra I readiness in eighth grade and more training for math and English teachers. He added that schools will introduce new math concepts at the prekindergarten level so that the city’s youngest learners can build numeracy skills. And a program that was rolled out last year to improve literacy levels will get a Spanish component for multilingual readers who are not recovering as quickly as their peers.
In the charter sector, where almost half the children in D.C. are enrolled, different campuses are taking different approaches, said Michelle J. Walker-Davis, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. Some of the most successful schools have boasted small-group instruction, frequent collaboration between teachers and additional instructional time.
In Friendship Public Charter Schools, where officials said students have rebounded to pre-pandemic reading levels, teachers point to their close ties with students.
“We have seen high retention of our strongest teachers, and they have good relationships that we’re able to leverage,” said Patricia A. Brantley, chief executive of the Friendship charter network. “We find that our students need to have those ongoing, long relationships. It gives us this other data beyond test scores about how students learn best, what motivates them and what they can do.”
In schools across the city, students experienced more than just academic challenges when they were learning on computer screens and isolated from their classmates. Some children lived in homes with speedy WiFi, while others shared devices with their siblings. Some students received help with schoolwork from parents or tutors, while others struggled alone while their parents reported to in-person jobs.
When classrooms reopened, many students had to learn how to be in school again — or for the first time.
“The reacclimation to writing, to doing things that require them to have a text-based response when they’re using the computer to type or using a touch screen — so building writing stamina,” said Vielka Scott-Marcus, Friendship’s chief academic officer. “There are just different opportunities that students were not afforded during the pandemic because we were in a virtual space.”
D.C. student test scores improve incrementally after pandemic-era plunge – The Washington Post
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