American schools just received their pandemic report card
Images: OECD/WSJ
American students suffered learning losses during the pandemic, but the negative effects were less severe compared to other developed nations.
That’s according to new data from the Program for International Student Assessment, aka the world’s most comprehensive assessment of student learning, which is administered once every few years to 15-year-olds from 81 OECD member states and partner economies.
The program’s most recent global assessment, published yesterday, found US students lag behind their peers in industrialized countries when it comes to math, scoring 3% lower last year than the average among participating OECD countries. At the same time, American teens scored higher than OECD average in both reading (+5%) and science (+2%).
- Both the US and overall OECD scored lower across all three academic categories in 2022 compared to the previous assessment in 2018, with the steepest drop-off for both occurring in math.
- The US now ranks sixth in reading, 12th in science, and 28th in math out of a combined 81 OECD countries that took the test – all slight improvements compared to the last time the exam was administered in 2018.
📸 Big picture: Nearly three dozen countries maintained or improved upon their pre-pandemic math scores in 2022. Countries that did so shared some common characteristics, including shorter school closures during the pandemic and fewer impediments to remote learning, per the OECD’s report.
Ten countries – including the UK, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, and South Korea – saw their students score proficiently in all three categories last year, which the report largely attributed to “high levels of socio-economic fairness” in those nations.
đź“Š Flash poll: In general, are you satisfied with how US schools handled the Covid pandemic, given the circumstances?
See a 360° view of what media pundits are saying →
Sprinkles from the Left
- Some commentators argue millions of US students who entered 9th grade in the fall of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, are set to graduate this spring with little hope of recovering from the learning loss incurred while schools were shut.
- Others contend that American students’ “learning losses” during the pandemic are largely overblown, as data shows students continued to strive toward meaningful learning even with many forms of chaos erupting all around them.
- “America’s High Schoolers Are Running Out of Time” –Bloomberg Editorial Board
- “Can we please stop talking about so-called learning loss?” –Jo Boaler, The Hechinger Report
- “Politicians Should Pay for Ignoring America’s Education Crisis” –Former NY Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (D), WSJ
Sprinkles from the Right
- Some commentators argue the latest international schooling data proves once and for all that Democrats’ plan to shut down schools and push “remote learning” – for more than a year in some places – was a horrible mistake that devastated a generation of children.
- Others contend that progressives who advocated strongly for closing schools during the pandemic and keeping them closed as long as possible should be held accountable now that hindsight proves students’ learning performances took a major hit over Covid.
- “Blame US kids’ learning loss on Randi Weingarten & Tony Fauci” –NY Post Editorial Board
- “Progressives Advocated Pandemic School Closures. Now They’re Covering Their Tracks” –Kayla Bartsch, National Review
- “Critics of the pandemic school closures have been vindicated” –Becket Adams, Washington Examiner
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