Reading Scores Fall Off a Cliff
parents move to the right and two new designs
As many of you know, I write a monthly column in my local paper that I often share here too since so many of you live far away and won’t be picking up our free weekly paper at the grocery store or coffee shop. This depressing but important piece below ran here this week in The Valley Breeze.
The column focuses on my state of Rhode Island but the results were quite bad almost everywhere and my observations and arguments apply broadly. Louisiana was the only state to recover its pre-pandemic scores in reading, actually improving 6 points above its 2019 results.
To see results in your state—or any state— in math and reading in grades 4 and 8, click here.
Column:
It’s hard to imagine a more important story than the one I’m about to tell you, but most of you will not have heard a peep about it in the news this week or last. On the one hand, it’s understandable because we are currently dealing with what feels like a fire hose of news every single day; on the other hand, it’s a sign of how upside down the priorities of both local and national media are in deciding which stories are front-page worthy.
We have a reading crisis in our state and in our nation, and it’s getting worse.
Every two years, a representative sample of 4th- and 8th-graders in all 50 states take the NAEP test (National Assessment of Educational Progress) in reading and math and the news here in the Ocean State is pretty gutting, especially for the students who struggle most – for reasons of space, this column will be solely focused on the reading results even though the math results are also very troubling.
Rhode Island has more students than ever in grades 4 and 8 who are two levels below proficient in reading. There was hope that students both locally and nationally would recover from the pandemic losses and get back to pre-pandemic levels, but that did not happen. Despite consistent spending increases – including an unprecedented $650 million in extra money from the federal government during COVID – our reading outcomes for 4th- and 8th-graders are now worse than they were in 1992. And most alarming is that we now have a higher percentage of students than ever who are performing at the “below basic” level in reading.” Below basic is two levels below “proficient” and “denotes performance that falls below our lowest performance level.” In 4th grade reading, 39 percent of R.I. students scored below basic, up from 36 percent in 1998 and 38 percent last year. In 8th-grade reading, 34 percent of R.I. students scored below basic, up from 24 percent in 1998 and 32 percent in 2022.
Looking at the state’s reading results as a whole, only 33 percent of students in grade 4 scored at or above proficient in reading, and that number drops to 30 percent in grade 8. Perhaps a better way to say it is that 70 percent of our state’s 8th-graders are not considered proficient in reading, and the bottom has completely fallen out for the lowest performing students who most desperately need to improve. Rhode Island also has the widest achievement gap in the country when it comes to economically disadvantaged students. In 1998 that gap was big at 26 points but in 2024, it rose to 32 points.
Did the disruption to schooling during COVID play a role in these despair inducing outcomes? Definitely.
Do cell phones and social media wreak havoc on kids’ attention spans and present massive challenges for teachers? Absolutely.
But there is another culprit: the misguided obsession with “social justice” and “equity” that is used to defend initiatives and priorities that inevitably lead to worse outcomes for the students they are supposed to help.
We spend a fortune on equity audits and social emotional learning with promises that academic outcomes will improve even though there is zero evidence that’s true. It’s as if the people in charge think that preening from behind a podium about equity and social justice actually helps kids – it doesn’t.
And not for nothing, but I’m hard-pressed to think of a better example of true social justice than the promise of literacy and ensuring that all kids can read.
More Stuff…
I suspect most of you don’t know that in the last election, parents with kids under 18 swung seven points to Trump between 2020 and 2024. I only know because part of my job is knowing these kinds of things. That’s a big shift in four years. I wrote a piece at Real Clear Education about how I saw this coming and how—love him or hate him— the president has delivered for those voters in his first few weeks.
Excerpt:
While progressive voters, Kamala Harris’s campaign team, and the Pod Save America guys wax poetic and point fingers about November’s election results, President Trump is delivering on his campaign promises to parents—firehose style. My sense is that most in the pundit class still don’t grasp how much parents with school-aged children influenced the election–shifting 7 points to the right between 2020 and 2024. Based on the first few weeks of President Trump’s second term, he did not take those votes for granted. His actions have shown parents across the political spectrum that he is delivering on promises made. Their frustrations with DEI and gender obsession in schools had reached a boiling point—so much so that many, for the first time, voted for him with hopes of restoring sanity in their children’s classrooms.
Anyone who had an actual ear to the ground in K-12 education over the past few years saw the Trump train coming from a mile away. It was obvious that parents of every political stripe had reached their limit regarding the complete ideological capture and non-academic focus of their kids’ schools. Republicans and Independents were certainly more publicly outspoken about their concerns, but anyone who failed to see Democrats losing patience as well was simply ignoring the bright red warning signs.
To read the full piece, click here.
Pie and Poker!
My ‘LOVE my view’ offerings continue to expand. My two most recent designs are pie and poker. The pie was inspired by a journalist and writer named Nancy Rommelman who, in her spare time, bakes up a storm for friends and family (and even her readers!) She wrote an excellent take-down of Meghan Markle’s attempt to become Netflix’s next Martha Stewart and as I read it —and thought of how much joy Nancy (who actually bakes instead of pretending) gets out of making delicious treats for those she loves—I decided that ‘LOVE my view’ needed a pie design.
After checking for product quality, I sent our first pie t-shirt to Nancy in NYC. I’ve never met her in person but if I do, I expect a piece of pie :)
The poker inspiration was two fold—first, my sons and their friends love to play poker and a poker chip is the perfect shape to take the place of the “o”. Secondly, one of my Twitter pals, who also lives in NYC, has had a weekly poker game for many years and I thought he’d love a shirt. I don’t yet have a picture of this one being modeled…but I better get one soon or all bets are off! Pun intended.
That’s all for now.
Talk soon,
Erika
Test scores have been falling since 2012, ever since the big push for technology in schools began. As edtech profits rise significantly, scores continue to decline. I wrote about it for Public last May: https://www.public.news/p/big-tech-hubris-and-greed-behind. My most recent piece is here: https://restorechildhood.substack.com/p/the-edtech-paradox-screens-in-schools Sadly, big tech would like us to ignore this connection and in fact claims that more tech will improve outcomes...I don't buy it.