NC students drop to historic lows on national tests. Two decades of gains were lost.

North Carolina students performed the worst they’ve done in more than 20 years on national tests of reading and math performance — showing how much achievement has declined since the pandemic.

Reading and math scores in the state dropped from three years ago for fourth- and eighth-grades on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.

The results released on Monday by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics also show that NAEP scores are the lowest they’ve been for North Carolina public school students since the late 1990s.

The drop in North Carolina’s performance mirrored nationwide drops on the exams, which have been called “The Nation’s Report Card.” Many of the gains that had been made before in-person instruction was disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic have been erased.

“The results in today’s Nation’s Report Card are appalling and unacceptable,” U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Friday in a news briefing before the results were officially released. “They’re a reminder of the impact this pandemic had on our learners and the important work that we must do now for our students.

“This is a moment of truth for education. How we respond to this will determine not only our recovery but our nation’s standing in the world.”

NAEP includes tests of fourth- and eighth-graders that are normally given every two years to assess how U.S. students are doing. The exams were postponed in 2021, so this year’s results offer the first look at how the pandemic impacted the results.

NAEP is not a test of all students so there’s not enough data to report results for most individual districts.

In Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Guilford County, which are part of a nationwide program of 26 urban districts, enough students take them to report results. In the state’s other districts, a representative sample of students is selected to answer test questions.

The results can be viewed at www.nationsreportcard.gov.

‘Historic’ math decline

The average fourth-grade math score nationally dropped five points since 2019, the lowest it has been since 2003.

The average eighth-grade math score showed an eight point drop that Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, called “stark.” The score is the lowest it has been since 2000.

“These mathematics results are historic,” Carr said. “This is because they are the largest decline in mathematics we have observed in the entire history of this assessment.”

The average reading score in both fourth- and eighth-grade dropped three points since 2019. The reading scores haven’t been that low since 1998 for fourth-grade and 1992 for eighth-grade.

Scores didn’t go up in reading or math this year in any state. North Carolina’s scores are not considered to be statistically significantly different than the national averages.

“There is a major setback, nonetheless,” Carr said of the national results. “But I am convinced that this accurate and reliable information that we’re sharing today can help us turn things around for our students.”

NC at 20-year lows

In North Carolina, the average fourth-grade math score dropped five points to the lowest level since 2000. The average eighth-grade math score dropped 10 points to the lowest level since 1996.

The state’s average fourth-grade reading score dropped five points to the lowest level since 1998. The eighth-grade reading score dropped six points.

NAEP’s chart only lists the state’s eighth-grade reading score back to 1998. This year’s score is the lowest of any recorded on that chart.

The NAEP drop is reflected as well in recent declines in performance on state exams.

State test results released in September show that 51.2% of students were proficient on state exams during the 2021-22 school year. That compares to the 45.4% passing rate in the 2020-21 school year and 58.8% in the 2018-19 school year.

More than a third of schools met the state’s definition to be identified as low performing.

Schools are turning to programs such as intensive tutoring to try to help students recover. But state officials say it could take four years for students to get caught up with pandemic learning loss that left some students more than a year behind in math and reading at the end of the 2020-21 school year.

“These findings reflect what our Office of Learning Recovery identified in March of this year regarding the effects of lost instructional time and reaffirms our commitment to working towards recovery and acceleration statewide,” State Superintendent Catherine Truitt said in a news release Monday.

Achievement gaps widen

The new NAEP results also show setbacks in North Carolina and nationally in efforts to narrow achievement gaps between different student groups.

In North Carolina, the average reading score for Black fourth-grade students dropped 10 points since 2019 and is now at the lowest level since 1998. In comparison, the average score for white students only fell three points.

The gap that had been shrinking between the state’s white and Black fourth-grade students in reading is back at 30 points, the same as it was in 1998.

A similar widening happened in the state’s fourth-grade math performance, with scores dropping six points for white students compared to 10 points for Hispanic students and eight points for Black students.

While NAEP says the state’s fourth-grade score gap is “not significantly different” from what it was in 2000, it is wider now between white and Black students and white and Hispanic students.

A more extensive widening occurred in fourth-grade math between North Carolina students who are eligible for the National School Lunch Program than those who are not. This year’s drop in scores helped widen the gap between the two groups to 27 points compared to a 20-point gap in 2000.

“Today’s results show that children who were already furthest from opportunity before March 2020 and who were most impacted by COVID need the greatest support now to make up for lost ground in reading and math,” Cardona said.

Connection to remote learning?

The NAEP results come after the heated debate over the use of remote instruction during the pandemic. Some states were faster than others to resume in-person instruction, while others stayed with online classes longer due to COVID-19 concerns.

Multiple national and state studies have shown that the extended period where students were fully or partially remote has had negative academic consequences.

A state Department of Public Instruction analysis also found that the learning loss was less severe for students that received at least some in-person instruction compared to peers who only had online classes during the pandemic.

“These scores are the unfortunate consequence of Gov. Cooper’s unnecessarily prolonged school shutdown,” Randy Brechbiel, a spokesman for Senate leader Phil Berger, said in a statement Monday. “As Republicans warned, the closures erased decades of academic gains.

“The road to recovering from school shutdowns is a long one, and the legislature remains committed to helping students get back on track through measures like the Excellent Public Schools Act.”

But Carr cautioned against drawing a direct connection between time spent in remote learning and the NAEP scores. She pointed to how there were NAEP declines across the country.

“There’s nothing in this data which says we can draw a straight line between the time spent in remote learning in and of itself and student achievement,” Carr said. “There’s nothing in this data that tells us that there is a measurable difference in the performance between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed.”