I recently read an article titled, “I’m a Teacher. Here’s Why I Don’t Care About the NAEP Scores.” The piece was written by Jay Wamsted, a middle school math teacher in Atlanta, George, for EducationWeek online.
Wamsted writes,
“The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress results got released this week [actually a few weeks ago now]. I cannot stress the level to which I do not care.”
“Let me be clear. I am a teacher, a career educator. I have been teaching mathematics in Georgia for the last 17 years, at all levels from 8th to 12th grade. I have an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in math education. I care about my students and I care about their test data. I crave our end-of-the-year state assessments because they give me a snapshot of how good a job I did for my students. We have an in-district math test designed to demonstrate growth, one that we administer three times a year; I eagerly look forward to seeing those results, too.”
“However, I cannot bring myself to care about these NAEP outcomes. In a normal year? Maybe. This year, our first one back with any semblance of normalcy after three straight years of extreme COVID-19 disruption?”
“Nah, I just don’t care. Allow me to briefly explain why.”
“During the past two and a half years, COVID-19 has infected close to 100 million people in the United States alone. Over 1 million of those cases resulted in death. Millions were seriously ill and recovered; many were hospitalized. All of this disruption came at great expense to the routines and home lives of children who were forced to live with the effects of pandemic in their households, including the death of close family members. Are we to be surprised that students who families were struggling with serious health issues and even loss of lie had a difficult time taking an optional test tacked on to the end of the second year of disruption? I think not.”
“It is worth pointing out that to varying degrees, depending on district-level decisions, every child in America missed some amount of school. Why shouldn’t we expect to have some dip in the amount of material we learned? I went home in March 2020 and limped virtually through the remainder of the school year. I taught 100 percent virtual in the fall of that year for nine weeks, then did a hybrid for the rest of the school year – half in the room and half on Zoom.”
“Then for the 2021-22 school year, we were all in the class – in theory. In fact, children were out constantly all year due to illness. None of these plans worked perfectly, and they were all tremendously disruptive. A dip in test scores – noted across the board in all manner of states – was likely inevitable.”
“Americans have a hard time losing at anything, but it is time to admit that the pandemic beat us. Let’s take these NAEP scores in stride. Yes, all else being equal, we should not expect a significant drop in test scores in any given year. But the past few years have been far from ‘equal.’ Educators are working hard; students are settling in. Children are nothing if not elastic. This cohort will recover if we can intentionally fill in the learning gaps as we move forward. Let’s look at these scores again in a few years before we start freaking out.”
“Until then, color me unworried and untroubled. This ‘news’ is not news at all.”
Wamsted’s last line to his article is true. NAEP decline during the pandemic shouldn’t be “the news.” What should be news is the fact that this country basically flat-lined overall public school performance in reading and math, as measured by NAEP, for a quarter of a century – before COVID-19.
Is Wamsted bothered by that? He should be – he and the rest of the traditional public school system, including central office administrators, principals, and teachers. They should especially be bothered by the fact that black, brown, and poor kids in this country have historically been assigned to “basic” performance, as long as NAEP has been around, meaning those kids are behind the 8-ball when it comes to finding a well-paying job in this economy.
It’s funny to me when professional educators pick and choose the data they are going to pay attention to when it comes to student achievement. True, NAEP isn’t the only data we should be looking at when we are determining where our kids have landed after the last three years. But state data isn’t good either, with most states not showing encouraging data for black, brown, and poor kids for years. Again, for black, brown, and poor kids, I’m not hopeful as Wamsted when he talks about our youth’s elasticity and their ability to recover.
Finally, might it be that Wamsted, and other traditional educators, don’t want to pay attention to recent NAEP data, or any other school data for that matter from the last two years, because that data suggests a broken system unable to adjust to young learner needs at the exact time when those needs were greatest. It’s amazing to me that other sectors of our economy were able to morph and change based on COVID challenges and restrictions, but not our public education system. They cried foul, and continue to do so, just because kids couldn’t come to a classroom to learn.
Admit it. Our public school system was just not ready for something like COVID. And the sad part is they continue to be unready since they are so, so stubborn about in-person learning being the only way to learn.
Wamsted, and other traditional educators, would be wise to notice the district that did improve student scores over the last two years during the pandemic.
The Los Angeles Unified School District.
Much maligned, the LAUSD’s average scores for eighth-grade math and fourth-grade reading held steady between 2019 and 2022, while eighth-grade reading scores in the district saw a nine-point improvement.
How did LA do it? According to Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, LA’s NAEP performance was due to intentional planning, applying money to the need, and making kids and their families more virtually connected to learning.
Instead of complaining about NAEP, Wamsted and other public school educators like him, would be wise to think differently about how learning can happen – like LA did.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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