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"content": "\u003cp>The National Center for Education Statistics is a relatively obscure federal agency, but its mission – to collect data on the state of education – affects every public school in the country. Now, this work is under threat because of cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. And that alarms a former Trump appointee who ran the statistics unit and fears it will become politicized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re talking about millions of dollars worth of investment just vanishing because someone canceled a contract too early without knowing what they were doing,” said James (Lynn) Woodworth, who served as the commissioner of the agency, known by the acronym NCES, from 2018 to 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65249\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-65249\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/James-Lynn-Woodworth.png\" alt=\"Headshot of a bearded man in a suit.\" width=\"250\" height=\"221\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/James-Lynn-Woodworth.png 625w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/James-Lynn-Woodworth-160x141.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former NCES Commissioner James (Lynn) Woodworth fears that vital public data could be mishandled and lost amid the sudden contract cancelations by the Trump administration. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Hoover Institution)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Congress mandates a June 1 NCES report on the condition of education. This year, it’s not clear how much fresh data will still exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vital data collections have been \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/mattberg33/status/1889423544506896851\">canceled\u003c/a>. Historical data could be lost. And there’s a looming threat of future political tampering. Woodworth says that policymakers and the public would be operating in the dark without basic data on student achievement, enrollment, poverty and school finances. In an interview last week from his home in Arkansas, he also said he worries about how sensitive student data could be mishandled in the wake of the abrupt contract terminations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The data belongs to the people,” Woodworth said. “It doesn’t belong to the president. It belongs to the public. It is a public asset.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woodworth built his research career documenting the benefits of charter schools and is now a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. “There are things that the Department of Education does that probably should be better left to the states, or, quite frankly, the federal government shouldn’t be involved in,” he said. “But NCES existed for over 100 years before the Department of Education was ever founded because one of the legitimate purposes of the federal government in education is collecting data so that people can see how schools are doing. We need to make data-driven decisions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Removal of commissioner ‘disturbing’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Woodworth also decried the unexplained and \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/24/trump-presidency-news/#link-WJ5DMF54K5ENNFNOFFSNBIXRZI\">sudden removal last week\u003c/a> of his successor, Peggy Carr, a Biden appointee whose congressionally determined six-year term was supposed to extend through 2027. He called her departure a “disturbing development.” The Trump administration put Carr, a 30-year career NCES employee, on paid administrative leave, and named Chris Chapman acting commissioner. (Reached last week, Carr said she didn’t want to comment now on her dismissal.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65250\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-65250\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Peggy-Carr.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Peggy-Carr.png 625w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Peggy-Carr-160x160.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Trump administration put Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center of Education Statistics, on administrative leave two years before the end of her six-year term. Photo retrieved from the Education Department website.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The American Statistical Association’s executive director, Ron Wasserstein, said Carr’s removal would undermine public trust in education statistics. “Removing the head of a statistical agency without justifiable professional cause is likely to erode this trust, as it will be perceived by many as an attempt to improperly influence official statistics or as a signal of distrust in the agency itself,” he \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ron-wasserstein_mondays-termination-of-scores-of-department-activity-7300567417787731968-wKFX/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAIVRssBCeBUuBioxXEMCbsUN4fPRyBPIDw\">wrote on LinkedIn\u003c/a> last week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those fears are well-founded. Woodworth recounted instances when he was able to resist political pressures from both the Trump and the Biden administrations. Trump officials, he said, wanted him to say that U.S. academic performance was worse than reported on international tests. “They wanted to use a different number,” Woodworth said, “because they were arguing that the education system was failing.” He also said that Biden administration officials asked him to generate a statistic for Jan. 19, 2021, the day before Biden took office. “We had estimates for how many schools were operating in January,” Woodworth said. “But wanting to know the exact number on that particular date screamed of political use.” Although Woodworth was able to hold out against those demands, he worries that with Carr’s removal, the political insulation he once enjoyed is gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Congress needs to speak up’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“Congress needs to speak up,” said Woodworth. “Congress requires these data points to be collected…Do you not feel those are worth collecting? You’re allowing them to be dropped essentially.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woodworth called upon Congress to take action to preserve the nation’s data infrastructure, which includes not only NCES but also 12 other principal statistical agencies that collect everything from unemployment statistics to airline travel. Woodworth thinks Congress should set up a federal statistics agency under its aegis so data can’t be removed or distorted by the president.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even though Mr. Trump might not not be interested in a particular data point,” he said, “the next administration may really need it to put their policies in place. That’s why the statistical system is supposed to be apolitical.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike other statistical agencies in the federal government, such as the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics, NCES does not have many statisticians on staff. That is because congressional appropriation rules limit the hiring of full-time staff at the Education Department and require that most of NCES’s budget be spent externally. Woodworth estimates that 90 percent of its data gathering and reporting work is contracted out to private firms and organizations. Even some of its websites with .gov domains are actually maintained by outside contractors. Woodworth also said that NCES does not operate its own facility to hold all the data. Instead, the federal government pays the same private research organizations to keep it in their data centers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been arguing for a long time that the biggest bang for the buck is to actually hire more federal staff and stop using so many contractors,” Woodworth said. Outside contractors are not only paid more than federal workers, but the contract payments also include overhead costs for office space and employee benefits and a profit margin. That makes them a prime target for cost-cutting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With DOGE’s contract cancellations, the duties of maintaining historical data and making data available to the public were canceled along with the collection of new data. “We don’t really know for sure what’s going to happen to that data,” Woodworth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Archiving and crowdsourcing data\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Researchers at the private research organizations have been describing internal efforts to rapidly archive data. Although many statistics are still publicly available and can be downloaded from Department of Education websites, researchers also hope to protect the original raw data that has not been redacted for student privacy. It’s not clear what will happen to this information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are some informal, uncoordinated efforts to preserve public data in the event that open access disappears. \u003ca href=\"https://www.datalumos.org/datalumos/\">DataLumos\u003c/a>, a free, open-access data archive at the University of Michigan, is one such crowdsourcing site. In February, researchers \u003ca href=\"https://www.datalumos.org/datalumos/search/studies?start=0&ARCHIVE=datalumos&KEYWORD_FREE_FACET=education&sort=DATEUPDATED%20desc&rows=25\">uploaded data files\u003c/a> dating back to 1968 from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights along with a vast trove of basic education data called ED Data Express. It includes figures since 2010 on student enrollment, teachers, school funding, absenteeism, graduation, homeless students and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Private research organizations are expected to begin mass layoffs of education statisticians now that a lot of their work has been terminated. That could mean a loss of expertise and institutional knowledge in how to collect the nation’s school data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woodworth is especially concerned about the cancellation of a widely used dataset called the Common Core of Data, which includes figures on student enrollment by grade, gender, income, race and ethnicity and geography. The poverty and enrollment rates in this dataset are used to calculate the distribution of roughly $16 billion in federal Title I funding for low-income children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Losing that data also means that it will be impossible to assemble a nationally representative sample of students for research purposes or for taking the next National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a congressionally mandated test known as the nation’s report card.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NAEP was initially spared from the first round of cuts on Feb. 10. But NAEP includes a large basket of assessments, and nine days later, on Feb. 19, the Education Department canceled a contract to administer one of the NAEP tests, a long-term trend assessment of 17-year-olds that hasn’t been administered since 2012. The law says this particular assessment needs to be administered periodically, but doesn’t specify the period.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>About that $1.4 million mailroom contract\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Both DOGE and the \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/usedgov/status/1889800714336993415\">Department of Education touted on X\u003c/a> that they had terminated a seemingly absurd contract for $1.4 million to observe mailing and clerical operations at a mail center. Woodworth explained that this contract was necessary because NCES doesn’t have its own mail center to distribute an array of questionnaires along with cash incentive payments to families and teachers to fill them out. It had to use the Census Department’s mail room. “You actually do have to have someone over there to make sure that the forms are being handled properly and no one is exposing data,” said Woodworth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DOGE staffers have not publicly disclosed how they decided which data to cut and which to preserve. Indeed, neither DOGE nor the Education Department has yet to disclose or confirm a list of the cuts. The Education Department press office did not respond to my inquiries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woodworth said he has been told that DOGE staffers entered the Department of Education and required NCES staff to match every data collection or task to a line in the law. If the data collection was mentioned by name, that dataset was more likely to be saved. The Higher Education Act specifically refers to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a collection of data from universities and colleges, and it was spared. But the Education Sciences Reform Act more generally describes the kind of data that NCES should collect without mentioning official names of datasets. Many of those data collections were canceled. If DOGE’s goal had been to avoid running afoul of congressional laws, it apparently did not succeed. The Knowledge Alliance, an advocacy organization for private research organizations, identified \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Memo-on-IES-Statuatory-Basis.pdf\">seven data collections and research activities\u003c/a> that DOGE cut at the Education Department despite being codified into law by Congress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/how-could-project-2025-change-education/\">Project 2025\u003c/a>, a blueprint that conservatives wrote for Trump before he took office, calls for the elimination of the Department of Education. But it also states that statistics gathering is a valuable function that the federal government should “confine” itself to in education policy. So far, it looks like this is one case where the Trump administration isn’t following the script.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-former-trump-commissioner-blasts-education-data-cuts/\">\u003cem>education data\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The National Center for Education Statistics is a relatively obscure federal agency, but its mission – to collect data on the state of education – affects every public school in the country. Now, this work is under threat because of cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. And that alarms a former Trump appointee who ran the statistics unit and fears it will become politicized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re talking about millions of dollars worth of investment just vanishing because someone canceled a contract too early without knowing what they were doing,” said James (Lynn) Woodworth, who served as the commissioner of the agency, known by the acronym NCES, from 2018 to 2021.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65249\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-65249\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/James-Lynn-Woodworth.png\" alt=\"Headshot of a bearded man in a suit.\" width=\"250\" height=\"221\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/James-Lynn-Woodworth.png 625w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/James-Lynn-Woodworth-160x141.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former NCES Commissioner James (Lynn) Woodworth fears that vital public data could be mishandled and lost amid the sudden contract cancelations by the Trump administration. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the Hoover Institution)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Congress mandates a June 1 NCES report on the condition of education. This year, it’s not clear how much fresh data will still exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vital data collections have been \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/mattberg33/status/1889423544506896851\">canceled\u003c/a>. Historical data could be lost. And there’s a looming threat of future political tampering. Woodworth says that policymakers and the public would be operating in the dark without basic data on student achievement, enrollment, poverty and school finances. In an interview last week from his home in Arkansas, he also said he worries about how sensitive student data could be mishandled in the wake of the abrupt contract terminations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The data belongs to the people,” Woodworth said. “It doesn’t belong to the president. It belongs to the public. It is a public asset.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woodworth built his research career documenting the benefits of charter schools and is now a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. “There are things that the Department of Education does that probably should be better left to the states, or, quite frankly, the federal government shouldn’t be involved in,” he said. “But NCES existed for over 100 years before the Department of Education was ever founded because one of the legitimate purposes of the federal government in education is collecting data so that people can see how schools are doing. We need to make data-driven decisions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Removal of commissioner ‘disturbing’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Woodworth also decried the unexplained and \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/24/trump-presidency-news/#link-WJ5DMF54K5ENNFNOFFSNBIXRZI\">sudden removal last week\u003c/a> of his successor, Peggy Carr, a Biden appointee whose congressionally determined six-year term was supposed to extend through 2027. He called her departure a “disturbing development.” The Trump administration put Carr, a 30-year career NCES employee, on paid administrative leave, and named Chris Chapman acting commissioner. (Reached last week, Carr said she didn’t want to comment now on her dismissal.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65250\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-65250\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Peggy-Carr.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Peggy-Carr.png 625w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/03/Peggy-Carr-160x160.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Trump administration put Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center of Education Statistics, on administrative leave two years before the end of her six-year term. Photo retrieved from the Education Department website.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The American Statistical Association’s executive director, Ron Wasserstein, said Carr’s removal would undermine public trust in education statistics. “Removing the head of a statistical agency without justifiable professional cause is likely to erode this trust, as it will be perceived by many as an attempt to improperly influence official statistics or as a signal of distrust in the agency itself,” he \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ron-wasserstein_mondays-termination-of-scores-of-department-activity-7300567417787731968-wKFX/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAIVRssBCeBUuBioxXEMCbsUN4fPRyBPIDw\">wrote on LinkedIn\u003c/a> last week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those fears are well-founded. Woodworth recounted instances when he was able to resist political pressures from both the Trump and the Biden administrations. Trump officials, he said, wanted him to say that U.S. academic performance was worse than reported on international tests. “They wanted to use a different number,” Woodworth said, “because they were arguing that the education system was failing.” He also said that Biden administration officials asked him to generate a statistic for Jan. 19, 2021, the day before Biden took office. “We had estimates for how many schools were operating in January,” Woodworth said. “But wanting to know the exact number on that particular date screamed of political use.” Although Woodworth was able to hold out against those demands, he worries that with Carr’s removal, the political insulation he once enjoyed is gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>‘Congress needs to speak up’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“Congress needs to speak up,” said Woodworth. “Congress requires these data points to be collected…Do you not feel those are worth collecting? You’re allowing them to be dropped essentially.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woodworth called upon Congress to take action to preserve the nation’s data infrastructure, which includes not only NCES but also 12 other principal statistical agencies that collect everything from unemployment statistics to airline travel. Woodworth thinks Congress should set up a federal statistics agency under its aegis so data can’t be removed or distorted by the president.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even though Mr. Trump might not not be interested in a particular data point,” he said, “the next administration may really need it to put their policies in place. That’s why the statistical system is supposed to be apolitical.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike other statistical agencies in the federal government, such as the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics, NCES does not have many statisticians on staff. That is because congressional appropriation rules limit the hiring of full-time staff at the Education Department and require that most of NCES’s budget be spent externally. Woodworth estimates that 90 percent of its data gathering and reporting work is contracted out to private firms and organizations. Even some of its websites with .gov domains are actually maintained by outside contractors. Woodworth also said that NCES does not operate its own facility to hold all the data. Instead, the federal government pays the same private research organizations to keep it in their data centers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been arguing for a long time that the biggest bang for the buck is to actually hire more federal staff and stop using so many contractors,” Woodworth said. Outside contractors are not only paid more than federal workers, but the contract payments also include overhead costs for office space and employee benefits and a profit margin. That makes them a prime target for cost-cutting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With DOGE’s contract cancellations, the duties of maintaining historical data and making data available to the public were canceled along with the collection of new data. “We don’t really know for sure what’s going to happen to that data,” Woodworth said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Archiving and crowdsourcing data\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Researchers at the private research organizations have been describing internal efforts to rapidly archive data. Although many statistics are still publicly available and can be downloaded from Department of Education websites, researchers also hope to protect the original raw data that has not been redacted for student privacy. It’s not clear what will happen to this information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are some informal, uncoordinated efforts to preserve public data in the event that open access disappears. \u003ca href=\"https://www.datalumos.org/datalumos/\">DataLumos\u003c/a>, a free, open-access data archive at the University of Michigan, is one such crowdsourcing site. In February, researchers \u003ca href=\"https://www.datalumos.org/datalumos/search/studies?start=0&ARCHIVE=datalumos&KEYWORD_FREE_FACET=education&sort=DATEUPDATED%20desc&rows=25\">uploaded data files\u003c/a> dating back to 1968 from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights along with a vast trove of basic education data called ED Data Express. It includes figures since 2010 on student enrollment, teachers, school funding, absenteeism, graduation, homeless students and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Private research organizations are expected to begin mass layoffs of education statisticians now that a lot of their work has been terminated. That could mean a loss of expertise and institutional knowledge in how to collect the nation’s school data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woodworth is especially concerned about the cancellation of a widely used dataset called the Common Core of Data, which includes figures on student enrollment by grade, gender, income, race and ethnicity and geography. The poverty and enrollment rates in this dataset are used to calculate the distribution of roughly $16 billion in federal Title I funding for low-income children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Losing that data also means that it will be impossible to assemble a nationally representative sample of students for research purposes or for taking the next National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a congressionally mandated test known as the nation’s report card.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NAEP was initially spared from the first round of cuts on Feb. 10. But NAEP includes a large basket of assessments, and nine days later, on Feb. 19, the Education Department canceled a contract to administer one of the NAEP tests, a long-term trend assessment of 17-year-olds that hasn’t been administered since 2012. The law says this particular assessment needs to be administered periodically, but doesn’t specify the period.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>About that $1.4 million mailroom contract\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Both DOGE and the \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/usedgov/status/1889800714336993415\">Department of Education touted on X\u003c/a> that they had terminated a seemingly absurd contract for $1.4 million to observe mailing and clerical operations at a mail center. Woodworth explained that this contract was necessary because NCES doesn’t have its own mail center to distribute an array of questionnaires along with cash incentive payments to families and teachers to fill them out. It had to use the Census Department’s mail room. “You actually do have to have someone over there to make sure that the forms are being handled properly and no one is exposing data,” said Woodworth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DOGE staffers have not publicly disclosed how they decided which data to cut and which to preserve. Indeed, neither DOGE nor the Education Department has yet to disclose or confirm a list of the cuts. The Education Department press office did not respond to my inquiries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woodworth said he has been told that DOGE staffers entered the Department of Education and required NCES staff to match every data collection or task to a line in the law. If the data collection was mentioned by name, that dataset was more likely to be saved. The Higher Education Act specifically refers to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a collection of data from universities and colleges, and it was spared. But the Education Sciences Reform Act more generally describes the kind of data that NCES should collect without mentioning official names of datasets. Many of those data collections were canceled. If DOGE’s goal had been to avoid running afoul of congressional laws, it apparently did not succeed. The Knowledge Alliance, an advocacy organization for private research organizations, identified \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Memo-on-IES-Statuatory-Basis.pdf\">seven data collections and research activities\u003c/a> that DOGE cut at the Education Department despite being codified into law by Congress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/how-could-project-2025-change-education/\">Project 2025\u003c/a>, a blueprint that conservatives wrote for Trump before he took office, calls for the elimination of the Department of Education. But it also states that statistics gathering is a valuable function that the federal government should “confine” itself to in education policy. So far, it looks like this is one case where the Trump administration isn’t following the script.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-former-trump-commissioner-blasts-education-data-cuts/\">\u003cem>education data\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"http://hechingerreport.org/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A virtual wrecking ball took aim last Monday at the relatively small, wonky corner of the Department of Education that I write about every week: evaluation studies and data collection. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) posted on X that it had terminated 89 of these contracts worth $881 million. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These particular cuts stunned people involved in education research because they didn’t go after “woke” studies about equity, diversity or “culturally relevant pedagogy” — all more obvious targets of the new administration. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instead, researchers described the canceled projects at the department’s Institute of Education Sciences as rigorous evaluations of how the federal government spends education dollars, efforts to improve the reading and math skills of U.S. students and guides for teachers on evidence-based methods of instruction. Many of the projects were near completion and had mostly been paid out, which means that the implied savings are likely much less than $881 million touted by DOGE.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DOGE also terminated masses of census-like data collections that are used to track student trends and help schools make informed decisions. U.S. participation in international assessments was also canceled. Without those data points and results, it may be impossible to tell how well students are doing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 89 cancelled contracts were signed with private research firms and nonprofits. The Institute of Education Sciences has a rather small in-house staff and relies on outside contractors to conduct much of its work. And unlike most agreements between private parties, these contracts can be terminated by the federal government for any reason, such as shifting policy priorities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The cuts kept coming. Late Thursday, the Education Department announced that it had terminated an additional 10 research and technical assistance contracts with its regional education laboratories totaling $336 million. In this case, the administration said it was targeting ideologically driven spending, such as a project advising schools in Ohio to conduct “equity audits.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Federal grants to university researchers were largely unaffected in the cuts announced Monday, though some professors served as advisers or subcontractors on the terminated contracts with private research organizations. University of Texas education professor Sarah Powell said the American Institutes for Research told her to cease working on two guides for math teachers on evidence-based ways to teach STEM topics, referring to science, technology, engineering and math. Another guide for teachers on evidence-based ways to combat student absenteeism was also killed. Without these guides, it can be difficult for educators to know which research to trust.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/article/department-of-education-institute-education-science-contracts-doge\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">interview\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with ProPublica, a Department of Education spokeswoman described the terminated contracts as examples of “waste, fraud and abuse.” On X, the Education Department \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/usedgov/status/1889800714336993415\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">shared\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> three examples of wasteful expenses that had been cut: $3 million for a report to show that prior reports were not utilized, $4.6 million to coordinate Zoom and in-person meetings, and a $1.5 million contract to observe mailing and clerical operations. But neither DOGE, which claimed to be conducting its work with full transparency, nor the Education Department identified which contracts contained these expenses, nor did they release a complete list of the canceled contracts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The scope of the cuts was unclear to many researchers. An \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/mattberg33/status/1889423544506896851\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">unverified spreadsheet\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the canceled contracts circulated on X. It was posted by a journalist at Crooked Media, founded by former speechwriters and communications officials in the Obama administration. The journalist, Matt Berg, said he had obtained it from a senior career employee at the Education Department and he believed the list was drafted by DOGE. Several former Education Department officials recognized the contracts and told me the list, if not the dollar totals, appears to be accurate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rachel Dinkes, head of the Knowledge Alliance, which advocates for research organizations that receive federal funding such as Mathematica and American Institutes for Research, said her organization had verified from its members that at least 56 of the 89 contracts on the spreadsheet had indeed been canceled. As of late last week, she was still working to confirm the remainder of the list.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Among the cancellations was an 11-year study of youths with disabilities, which Dinkes said was halfway finished. It was supposed to identify which programs were effective in improving employment and educational outcomes for these students after high school. More than 1,000 youths with disabilities were supposed to receive special instruction and support in 2025 and 2026 through this study, which has now been terminated.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During confirmation hearings last week for secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said her office heard from a former teacher in her state who had been using one of the terminated grants to develop a tutoring program. “Considering the poor reading and math scores … shouldn’t the Department of Education continue to collect the data and evaluate outcomes rather than to halt these activities so that you can help states know what works well?” McMahon sidestepped the question, saying she will “assess these programs” if she is confirmed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Contracts to administer the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a test mandated by Congress that tracks student achievement, were not directly terminated. But Mark Schneider, a former director of the Institute of Education Sciences that oversees these research and data contracts, explained that other K-12 data collections that NAEP relies on were cut. Statisticians cannot create nationally representative samples of students to take the NAEP test without data on student demographics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A separate collection of data from colleges and universities, called the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, was spared from the cuts, Dinkes said, as was the College Scorecard, which tracks whether students are finding good paying jobs after graduation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I talked with more than 20 researchers, most of whom asked me to keep their identity anonymous for fear of retribution from the Trump administration. Some only communicated with me through encrypted channels and refused to email or talk by phone.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Based on these interviews, it seems unlikely that taxpayers will reap $881 million in savings from the cancellations. Multiyear contracts are paid out over time and in many cases, much of the money has already been disbursed. When I looked up the contract numbers online, they were sometimes much smaller than what the unverified DOGE spreadsheet listed. For example, one contract listed for $19 million was actually $14 million. Six years of the seven-year contract have already elapsed and most of the contract amount has presumably been paid out.\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office last week, DOGE head Elon Musk admitted that his team would make mistakes. “We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we’ll also fix the mistakes very quickly,” Musk said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, researchers explained to me that it would not be easy to restart any of these contracts. Some said the government would have to launch a new competitive bidding process and sign fresh contracts. Moreover, student privacy protections might prevent researchers from preserving the years of research work that has already been completed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“A lot of these contracts have data deletion clauses,” a researcher told me. “The fact is that they won’t be able to reopen them if they change their mind. They’re not just paused. They’re terminated and we’re losing the information.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The clock is now ticking. Researchers said they have 30 days from the date of cancellation to wind down projects. As they scramble to complete that unexpected task, they also described another time-consuming chore: replacing the word “gender” with “sex” in every one of their government contracts that have not been canceled, as per a White House directive. The modification requires legal review and is adding to overhead expenses. “It’s ironic,” one researcher said. “They’re calling themselves the Department of Government Efficiency. But they’re just wasting money.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-doge-death-blow-education-studies/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DOGE’s cuts to education research\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proof Points\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and other \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hechinger newsletters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A virtual wrecking ball took aim last Monday at the relatively small, wonky corner of the Department of Education that I write about every week: evaluation studies and data collection. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) posted on X that it had terminated 89 of these contracts worth $881 million. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These particular cuts stunned people involved in education research because they didn’t go after “woke” studies about equity, diversity or “culturally relevant pedagogy” — all more obvious targets of the new administration. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instead, researchers described the canceled projects at the department’s Institute of Education Sciences as rigorous evaluations of how the federal government spends education dollars, efforts to improve the reading and math skills of U.S. students and guides for teachers on evidence-based methods of instruction. Many of the projects were near completion and had mostly been paid out, which means that the implied savings are likely much less than $881 million touted by DOGE.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DOGE also terminated masses of census-like data collections that are used to track student trends and help schools make informed decisions. U.S. participation in international assessments was also canceled. Without those data points and results, it may be impossible to tell how well students are doing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 89 cancelled contracts were signed with private research firms and nonprofits. The Institute of Education Sciences has a rather small in-house staff and relies on outside contractors to conduct much of its work. And unlike most agreements between private parties, these contracts can be terminated by the federal government for any reason, such as shifting policy priorities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The cuts kept coming. Late Thursday, the Education Department announced that it had terminated an additional 10 research and technical assistance contracts with its regional education laboratories totaling $336 million. In this case, the administration said it was targeting ideologically driven spending, such as a project advising schools in Ohio to conduct “equity audits.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Federal grants to university researchers were largely unaffected in the cuts announced Monday, though some professors served as advisers or subcontractors on the terminated contracts with private research organizations. University of Texas education professor Sarah Powell said the American Institutes for Research told her to cease working on two guides for math teachers on evidence-based ways to teach STEM topics, referring to science, technology, engineering and math. Another guide for teachers on evidence-based ways to combat student absenteeism was also killed. Without these guides, it can be difficult for educators to know which research to trust.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/article/department-of-education-institute-education-science-contracts-doge\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">interview\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with ProPublica, a Department of Education spokeswoman described the terminated contracts as examples of “waste, fraud and abuse.” On X, the Education Department \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/usedgov/status/1889800714336993415\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">shared\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> three examples of wasteful expenses that had been cut: $3 million for a report to show that prior reports were not utilized, $4.6 million to coordinate Zoom and in-person meetings, and a $1.5 million contract to observe mailing and clerical operations. But neither DOGE, which claimed to be conducting its work with full transparency, nor the Education Department identified which contracts contained these expenses, nor did they release a complete list of the canceled contracts.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The scope of the cuts was unclear to many researchers. An \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/mattberg33/status/1889423544506896851\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">unverified spreadsheet\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the canceled contracts circulated on X. It was posted by a journalist at Crooked Media, founded by former speechwriters and communications officials in the Obama administration. The journalist, Matt Berg, said he had obtained it from a senior career employee at the Education Department and he believed the list was drafted by DOGE. Several former Education Department officials recognized the contracts and told me the list, if not the dollar totals, appears to be accurate. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rachel Dinkes, head of the Knowledge Alliance, which advocates for research organizations that receive federal funding such as Mathematica and American Institutes for Research, said her organization had verified from its members that at least 56 of the 89 contracts on the spreadsheet had indeed been canceled. As of late last week, she was still working to confirm the remainder of the list.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Among the cancellations was an 11-year study of youths with disabilities, which Dinkes said was halfway finished. It was supposed to identify which programs were effective in improving employment and educational outcomes for these students after high school. More than 1,000 youths with disabilities were supposed to receive special instruction and support in 2025 and 2026 through this study, which has now been terminated.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During confirmation hearings last week for secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said her office heard from a former teacher in her state who had been using one of the terminated grants to develop a tutoring program. “Considering the poor reading and math scores … shouldn’t the Department of Education continue to collect the data and evaluate outcomes rather than to halt these activities so that you can help states know what works well?” McMahon sidestepped the question, saying she will “assess these programs” if she is confirmed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Contracts to administer the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a test mandated by Congress that tracks student achievement, were not directly terminated. But Mark Schneider, a former director of the Institute of Education Sciences that oversees these research and data contracts, explained that other K-12 data collections that NAEP relies on were cut. Statisticians cannot create nationally representative samples of students to take the NAEP test without data on student demographics. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A separate collection of data from colleges and universities, called the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, was spared from the cuts, Dinkes said, as was the College Scorecard, which tracks whether students are finding good paying jobs after graduation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I talked with more than 20 researchers, most of whom asked me to keep their identity anonymous for fear of retribution from the Trump administration. Some only communicated with me through encrypted channels and refused to email or talk by phone.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Based on these interviews, it seems unlikely that taxpayers will reap $881 million in savings from the cancellations. Multiyear contracts are paid out over time and in many cases, much of the money has already been disbursed. When I looked up the contract numbers online, they were sometimes much smaller than what the unverified DOGE spreadsheet listed. For example, one contract listed for $19 million was actually $14 million. Six years of the seven-year contract have already elapsed and most of the contract amount has presumably been paid out.\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office last week, DOGE head Elon Musk admitted that his team would make mistakes. “We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we’ll also fix the mistakes very quickly,” Musk said. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, researchers explained to me that it would not be easy to restart any of these contracts. Some said the government would have to launch a new competitive bidding process and sign fresh contracts. Moreover, student privacy protections might prevent researchers from preserving the years of research work that has already been completed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“A lot of these contracts have data deletion clauses,” a researcher told me. “The fact is that they won’t be able to reopen them if they change their mind. They’re not just paused. They’re terminated and we’re losing the information.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The clock is now ticking. Researchers said they have 30 days from the date of cancellation to wind down projects. As they scramble to complete that unexpected task, they also described another time-consuming chore: replacing the word “gender” with “sex” in every one of their government contracts that have not been canceled, as per a White House directive. The modification requires legal review and is adding to overhead expenses. “It’s ironic,” one researcher said. “They’re calling themselves the Department of Government Efficiency. But they’re just wasting money.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-doge-death-blow-education-studies/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DOGE’s cuts to education research\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proof Points\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and other \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hechinger newsletters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>U.S. students were still nearly half a grade level behind in both math and reading in the spring of 2024, compared with achievement levels before the pandemic. That’s according to the latest release of the Education Recovery Scorecard, a data-rich deep dive into student learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s news arrives on the heels of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270880/math-reading-covid-naep\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Nation’s Report Card\u003c/a>, released at the end of January, which also found students still trying to make up for learning they missed during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if that report card provided a grainy Polaroid of what’s happening in schools, the Education Recovery Scorecard offers a high-resolution digital photo, allowing researchers to zoom in to student learning at the district level in some 8,700 school districts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Scorecard is a joint venture between Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research and The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are six quick takeaways from the \u003ca href=\"https://educationrecoveryscorecard.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new, third-annual Scorecard.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>1. \u003cstrong>U.S. students are still nearly half a grade behind in math and reading\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s been nearly five years since the pandemic first closed schools, yet students are still behind. The Scorecard also shows students fell further behind in reading from 2022 to 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not just that students are failing to catch up, but that students are continuing to fall behind,” says one of the report’s authors, Harvard’s Tom Kane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That reading trend line raises important questions about how quickly states can expect to see improvement \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/06/02/nx-s1-4916590/some-states-are-adopting-a-new-form-of-reading-instruction-to-combat-falling-scores\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">after many passed laws to improve literacy instruction\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data suggests it may be too soon to expect improvement, or that passing a law is easier than actually improving literacy instruction. Or both.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>2. 100+ school districts performed above pre-pandemic levels in math and reading\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While no state has returned its math \u003cem>and\u003c/em> reading scores to pre-pandemic levels, the Scorecard is able to highlight at least \u003ca href=\"https://educationrecoveryscorecard.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/List-of-Recovered-Districts-in-Math-and-Reading-2024.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">100 individual districts\u003c/a> that have returned to form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, just a quick glance into the data for Louisiana, a state that led, or nearly led, in math and reading recovery both, shows some districts, including Lafayette Parish and Terrebonne Parish, that are three-quarters of a grade level — or more — ahead of their 2019 reading levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>3. Achievement gaps widened\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to the Scorecard, the nation’s highest-income districts were “nearly 4 times more likely to recover” in math and reading than the lowest-income districts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the pandemic started, the disparity in math scores, specifically, has grown by 11%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A score disparity between students in predominantly nonminority versus minority districts has also increased 15%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sean Reardon, director of the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford and a co-author of the study, calls these results evidence of “a pernicious inequality.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>4. Federal relief money prevented larger losses, but \u003cem>how\u003c/em> it was spent matters \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/06/18/nx-s1-5010963/schools-aid-students-pandemic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Congress poured $190 billion\u003c/a> into the nation’s schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the spring of 2021, when the American Rescue Plan passed, the focus was on getting schools open again,” says Harvard’s Kane. “And so districts were only required to spend 20% on academic recovery.\u003cem>“\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many districts prioritized adding mental health supports for students or upgrading aging facilities, including HVAC. The Scorecard doesn’t argue that those were poor choices, only that it’s not realistic to expect that kind of spending to improve learning the way, say, a tutoring program can.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the report, “student achievement grew more in districts that spent more on academic interventions, such as tutoring or summer school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>5. Chronic absenteeism: It’s hard for students to catch up if they’re not in school\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“If the pandemic was the earthquake,” Tom Kane says, “we’re still dealing with the tsunami of chronic absenteeism that is slowing students’ learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing more than 10% of the school year, was already a problem, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/02/09/1228441120/covid-schools-students-learning\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">soared after the pandemic’s disruption\u003c/a> of public schooling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Scorecard includes absenteeism data for 20 states through spring of 2024. In those states, while chronic absenteeism continued to fall, more students are still missing more school than they were in 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research has demonstrated a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cresp.udel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/P18-002.5_final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">clear connection between missing school and lower student achievement.\u003c/a> Not only that, but one student’s absence can affect the achievement of their peers, too, with teachers being forced to spend more time backtracking and repeating instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>6. The Scorecard prescription\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Scorecard offers a few prescriptions for educators, administrators and lawmakers:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Without more federal help, states and schools should focus as much of their own funding as they can on academic recovery.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Communities should turn their attention to talking up the importance of daily school attendance. This kind of messaging shouldn’t just be left to schools.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Research suggests that parents don’t always know when their student is struggling, so the Scorecard encourages teachers to communicate directly with families.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>“Parents need to know if their child is below grade level so they can sign up for summer learning, or ask for a tutor,” Kane says. “If they don’t know, they’re not going to ask for help.\u003cem>“\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, more research is needed to study the range of reforms out there, including those new laws around improving literacy instruction, as well as efforts to ban cellphones from schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When policies improve learning, the researchers say, schools need to know that — and to understand why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"npr-transcript\">\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Transcript:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students from the United States are still behind in math and reading nearly five years after schools first closed because of the pandemic. Now, that’s according to a new report from researchers at Harvard and Stanford that backs up federal test data released late last month. NPR’s Cory Turner explains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CORY TURNER, BYLINE: The Education Recovery Scorecard is a data-rich collaboration born out of the pandemic, and it’s really the clearest picture we have of where student learning stands at this point. So let’s start with that big headline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TOM KANE: In both math and reading, U.S. students were nearly half a grade equivalent behind where their counterparts were in 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TURNER: That’s one of the Scorecard’s lead researchers, Tom Kane of Harvard. And he says the news is especially bad in reading. It’s no surprise that scores fell during the pandemic, but from 2022 to 2024, they kept falling, Kane says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KANE: It’s not just that students are failing to catch up, but the students are continuing to fall behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TURNER: The Scorecard also found achievement gaps widening. The highest-income districts were four times more likely than the lowest-income districts to fully recover in math and reading. Kane says the gap between predominantly white and predominantly Black and Hispanic districts has also grown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report does include some good news, highlighting more than a hundred individual school districts that have fully recovered in math and reading both. It also comes with a few forward-looking recommendations. Poll after poll have shown many parents don’t actually know it when their kids are falling behind. So Kane says schools need to be better about telling parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KANE: If they don’t know, they’re not going to ask for help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TURNER: Help like tutoring for their kids or signing them up for summer school. And Kane says with federal relief dollars all but spent, state and local leaders need to make sure they’re spending as much as they can to keep offering that help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cory Turner, NPR News.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(SOUNDBITE OF KHRUANGBIN’S “LADY AND MAN”)\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>U.S. students were still nearly half a grade level behind in both math and reading in the spring of 2024, compared with achievement levels before the pandemic. That’s according to the latest release of the Education Recovery Scorecard, a data-rich deep dive into student learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s news arrives on the heels of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270880/math-reading-covid-naep\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Nation’s Report Card\u003c/a>, released at the end of January, which also found students still trying to make up for learning they missed during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if that report card provided a grainy Polaroid of what’s happening in schools, the Education Recovery Scorecard offers a high-resolution digital photo, allowing researchers to zoom in to student learning at the district level in some 8,700 school districts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Scorecard is a joint venture between Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research and The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are six quick takeaways from the \u003ca href=\"https://educationrecoveryscorecard.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">new, third-annual Scorecard.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>1. \u003cstrong>U.S. students are still nearly half a grade behind in math and reading\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s been nearly five years since the pandemic first closed schools, yet students are still behind. The Scorecard also shows students fell further behind in reading from 2022 to 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not just that students are failing to catch up, but that students are continuing to fall behind,” says one of the report’s authors, Harvard’s Tom Kane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That reading trend line raises important questions about how quickly states can expect to see improvement \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/06/02/nx-s1-4916590/some-states-are-adopting-a-new-form-of-reading-instruction-to-combat-falling-scores\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">after many passed laws to improve literacy instruction\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The data suggests it may be too soon to expect improvement, or that passing a law is easier than actually improving literacy instruction. Or both.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>2. 100+ school districts performed above pre-pandemic levels in math and reading\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While no state has returned its math \u003cem>and\u003c/em> reading scores to pre-pandemic levels, the Scorecard is able to highlight at least \u003ca href=\"https://educationrecoveryscorecard.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/List-of-Recovered-Districts-in-Math-and-Reading-2024.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">100 individual districts\u003c/a> that have returned to form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, just a quick glance into the data for Louisiana, a state that led, or nearly led, in math and reading recovery both, shows some districts, including Lafayette Parish and Terrebonne Parish, that are three-quarters of a grade level — or more — ahead of their 2019 reading levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>3. Achievement gaps widened\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>According to the Scorecard, the nation’s highest-income districts were “nearly 4 times more likely to recover” in math and reading than the lowest-income districts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the pandemic started, the disparity in math scores, specifically, has grown by 11%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A score disparity between students in predominantly nonminority versus minority districts has also increased 15%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sean Reardon, director of the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford and a co-author of the study, calls these results evidence of “a pernicious inequality.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>4. Federal relief money prevented larger losses, but \u003cem>how\u003c/em> it was spent matters \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/06/18/nx-s1-5010963/schools-aid-students-pandemic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Congress poured $190 billion\u003c/a> into the nation’s schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In the spring of 2021, when the American Rescue Plan passed, the focus was on getting schools open again,” says Harvard’s Kane. “And so districts were only required to spend 20% on academic recovery.\u003cem>“\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many districts prioritized adding mental health supports for students or upgrading aging facilities, including HVAC. The Scorecard doesn’t argue that those were poor choices, only that it’s not realistic to expect that kind of spending to improve learning the way, say, a tutoring program can.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the report, “student achievement grew more in districts that spent more on academic interventions, such as tutoring or summer school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>5. Chronic absenteeism: It’s hard for students to catch up if they’re not in school\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“If the pandemic was the earthquake,” Tom Kane says, “we’re still dealing with the tsunami of chronic absenteeism that is slowing students’ learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing more than 10% of the school year, was already a problem, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/02/09/1228441120/covid-schools-students-learning\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">soared after the pandemic’s disruption\u003c/a> of public schooling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Scorecard includes absenteeism data for 20 states through spring of 2024. In those states, while chronic absenteeism continued to fall, more students are still missing more school than they were in 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research has demonstrated a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cresp.udel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/P18-002.5_final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">clear connection between missing school and lower student achievement.\u003c/a> Not only that, but one student’s absence can affect the achievement of their peers, too, with teachers being forced to spend more time backtracking and repeating instruction.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>6. The Scorecard prescription\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Scorecard offers a few prescriptions for educators, administrators and lawmakers:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Without more federal help, states and schools should focus as much of their own funding as they can on academic recovery.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Communities should turn their attention to talking up the importance of daily school attendance. This kind of messaging shouldn’t just be left to schools.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Research suggests that parents don’t always know when their student is struggling, so the Scorecard encourages teachers to communicate directly with families.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>“Parents need to know if their child is below grade level so they can sign up for summer learning, or ask for a tutor,” Kane says. “If they don’t know, they’re not going to ask for help.\u003cem>“\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, more research is needed to study the range of reforms out there, including those new laws around improving literacy instruction, as well as efforts to ban cellphones from schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When policies improve learning, the researchers say, schools need to know that — and to understand why.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"npr-transcript\">\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Transcript:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students from the United States are still behind in math and reading nearly five years after schools first closed because of the pandemic. Now, that’s according to a new report from researchers at Harvard and Stanford that backs up federal test data released late last month. NPR’s Cory Turner explains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CORY TURNER, BYLINE: The Education Recovery Scorecard is a data-rich collaboration born out of the pandemic, and it’s really the clearest picture we have of where student learning stands at this point. So let’s start with that big headline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TOM KANE: In both math and reading, U.S. students were nearly half a grade equivalent behind where their counterparts were in 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TURNER: That’s one of the Scorecard’s lead researchers, Tom Kane of Harvard. And he says the news is especially bad in reading. It’s no surprise that scores fell during the pandemic, but from 2022 to 2024, they kept falling, Kane says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KANE: It’s not just that students are failing to catch up, but the students are continuing to fall behind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TURNER: The Scorecard also found achievement gaps widening. The highest-income districts were four times more likely than the lowest-income districts to fully recover in math and reading. Kane says the gap between predominantly white and predominantly Black and Hispanic districts has also grown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report does include some good news, highlighting more than a hundred individual school districts that have fully recovered in math and reading both. It also comes with a few forward-looking recommendations. Poll after poll have shown many parents don’t actually know it when their kids are falling behind. So Kane says schools need to be better about telling parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KANE: If they don’t know, they’re not going to ask for help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TURNER: Help like tutoring for their kids or signing them up for summer school. And Kane says with federal relief dollars all but spent, state and local leaders need to make sure they’re spending as much as they can to keep offering that help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cory Turner, NPR News.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(SOUNDBITE OF KHRUANGBIN’S “LADY AND MAN”)\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>An independent research arm within the U.S. Department of Education is being all but shut down, employees of the department say. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is responsible for gathering and disseminating data on a wide range of topics, including research-backed teaching practices and the state of U.S. student achievement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many contracts have already been canceled, according to two employees briefed on the moves. They shared screenshots with NPR of emails sent on Monday notifying them of terminated contracts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The employees said they learned of the cuts at an emergency meeting called Monday afternoon by leaders of IES, a nonpartisan division of the Education Department that includes the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The employees asked that their names not be used because they feared for their jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research collected by IES is used by educators, state and local departments of education, school districts, colleges and other researchers to better understand student achievement, enrollment and a host of other important functions that shape the education system in this country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Monday meeting, employees were told that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a unit within the Trump administration \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5288988/doge-elon-musk-staff-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">run by Elon Musk\u003c/a>, plans to cancel most of IES’ contracts. Two employees shared screenshots of emails summoning them to that meeting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Employees described a somber mood where some fought back tears, and others raised questions about the future of IES.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of the employees who spoke with NPR said all of the contracts they oversee have been terminated. “So it begs the question, what will this mean for our jobs?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another employee was skeptical of the idea that these cuts would lead to more efficiency. “If they’re doing this to save government money, they are wasting millions today. All the money we have spent working on these products, down the drain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NPR reached out to the Department of Education, and to the White House, for comment. The White House has not responded. An Education Department spokesperson replied by sharing a link to a \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/DOGE/status/1889113011282907434\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Monday evening post\u003c/a> on the X account for DOGE.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The post said, “the Department of Education terminated 89 contracts worth $881mm” and that “one contractor was paid $1.5mm to ‘observe mailing and clerical operations’ at a mail center.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a third source with extensive knowledge of many of these canceled Education Department contracts, who would not speak publicly for fear of retribution, told NPR that one shuttered program was already underway in classrooms — to study ways to help students nationwide make up for ground they’ve lost in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to this source, students in multiple states were already working with high-quality, adaptive digital tools. Now, with the cancellation of that contract, the study will be cut short, and the learning tools could soon be removed from classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The canceled contracts also include surveys and data collection on a range of issues, including private schools, homeschooling and career and technical education programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a decimation,” the source told NPR, “the destruction of knowing what works for kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s shocking, it’s pointless,” said Thomas Weko, a former commissioner at the NCES, referring to the halt in important research work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that the creation of IES was “an attempt to put our understanding of education on a scientific footing with other fields of knowledge like medicine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If contracts tied to IES and NCES are indeed terminated, and its research becomes unavailable online, a trove of data gathered over many decades about the state of education in the U.S. could become difficult to access. It’s unclear what these contract terminations would mean for future data collection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>According to the employees NPR spoke with, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), will be preserved, at least for now. NAEP, also known as The Nation’s Report Card, is \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270880/math-reading-covid-naep\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the gold standard in assessments of student achievement\u003c/a> and releases widely used data on how K-12 students are faring in core subjects including math and reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>President Trump has repeatedly said he plans to close the Education Department, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/31/nx-s1-5280417/federal-workers-workforce-facts-cuts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">employs more than 4,000 people\u003c/a> and has an annual budget of $79 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/02/09/g-s1-47504/trump-super-bowl-musk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told Fox News\u003c/a> in an interview that aired on Sunday: “I’m going to tell [Elon Musk] very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. He’s going to find the same thing. Then I’m going to go, go to the military. Let’s check the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In recent days, administration officials also placed dozens of Education Department employees \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/02/03/nx-s1-5282233/trump-to-make-big-cuts-to-education-department\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on paid administrative leave\u003c/a> with little explanation. At the time, the White House confirmed the president’s plans to shutter programs within the department that are not protected by law and his plans to call on Congress to close the department entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trump’s pick to be education secretary, Linda McMahon, is set to appear before Congress \u003ca href=\"https://www.help.senate.gov/rep/newsroom/press/next-week-senate-help-committee-to-hold-confirmation-hearing-on-nomination-for-secretary-of-education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on Thursday \u003c/a>for her confirmation hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"npr-transcript\">\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Transcript:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the key functions of the U.S. Education Department are being eliminated, such as conducting research about U.S. schools and colleges and the millions of students who attend them. This is some of the work done by the Institute of Education Sciences. But employees of the department tell NPR that many of the contracts IES oversees have now ended. NPR education reporter Jonaki Mehta has been following the story. So before we get to what you’re hearing from your sources about these latest cuts, what exactly does IES do?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: The institute is responsible for overseeing a lot of the data that tells us everything from how students are doing in school to what teaching methods best work to educate students, enrollment data, school choice programs, just a massive swath of research that shapes how the education system works. IES supports school districts, state agencies and educators who then take this data and put it to work in classrooms and beyond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTÍNEZ: OK. Now to the cuts. What are you hearing about the kinds of cuts being made?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Yeah, I spoke to two employees of IES. They didn’t want to be named because they fear losing their jobs. They both told me that Monday afternoon, they got an email from IES managers calling for an emergency meeting. And in that meeting, they were told that most of IES’ contracts were going to be canceled based on guidance from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as most people know it now. That’s the unit within the Trump administration that’s being run by Elon Musk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>IES heavily relies on contractors to do what it does. So without these contractors, that work is essentially halted. The employees I spoke to said the mood in that meeting was somber and some were holding back tears. And one of the workers said all the contracts that they oversee were already canceled by the end of the workday, so they and their colleagues are really wondering what this means for their jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTÍNEZ: Can you tell us, like, an example of one of the programs that might be threatened now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: So another source my colleague Cory Turner spoke to has extensive knowledge of many of these contracts we’re talking about. For example, they said there are some high-quality digital tools that are already being used in classrooms in many states to measure how kids can make up ground in math. It’s part of a study that IES was conducting, and now that that contract is canceled, the study is going to be cut short, and the tools could soon be pulled from classrooms. This source called these cuts, quote, “the destruction of knowing what works for kids.” And the Department of Education got back to me late last night linking to a post on X by DOGE that basically confirmed that DOGE has cut dozens of contracts worth millions of dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTÍNEZ: So, OK, government efficiency is actually in the name of that unit, DOGE. Could these cuts make the government more efficient?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: President Trump said over the weekend, efforts like these across the federal government will save billions, but one IES employee put it this way. DOGE wants to make the government more efficient, but the government just wasted millions of dollars today by cutting these contracts. And I want to add some of the research conducted by IES is mandated by Congress, and it’s not clear how those programs will be affected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTÍNEZ: So now I’m wondering, Jonaki, what this means for our understanding of the education system in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: That’s the big question. I spoke to a couple of researchers who say that they and their colleagues are furiously downloading data from IES because they’re afraid the whole website could go dark and decades of data could become really hard to access. And moving forward, we just don’t know what will happen to this research. Once these contracts are scrapped, they can’t just be restarted. There’s a long bureaucratic process to get them up and running.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTÍNEZ: NPR education reporter Jonaki Mehta, thanks a lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>An independent research arm within the U.S. Department of Education is being all but shut down, employees of the department say. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is responsible for gathering and disseminating data on a wide range of topics, including research-backed teaching practices and the state of U.S. student achievement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many contracts have already been canceled, according to two employees briefed on the moves. They shared screenshots with NPR of emails sent on Monday notifying them of terminated contracts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The employees said they learned of the cuts at an emergency meeting called Monday afternoon by leaders of IES, a nonpartisan division of the Education Department that includes the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The employees asked that their names not be used because they feared for their jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research collected by IES is used by educators, state and local departments of education, school districts, colleges and other researchers to better understand student achievement, enrollment and a host of other important functions that shape the education system in this country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Monday meeting, employees were told that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a unit within the Trump administration \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5288988/doge-elon-musk-staff-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">run by Elon Musk\u003c/a>, plans to cancel most of IES’ contracts. Two employees shared screenshots of emails summoning them to that meeting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Employees described a somber mood where some fought back tears, and others raised questions about the future of IES.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of the employees who spoke with NPR said all of the contracts they oversee have been terminated. “So it begs the question, what will this mean for our jobs?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another employee was skeptical of the idea that these cuts would lead to more efficiency. “If they’re doing this to save government money, they are wasting millions today. All the money we have spent working on these products, down the drain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NPR reached out to the Department of Education, and to the White House, for comment. The White House has not responded. An Education Department spokesperson replied by sharing a link to a \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/DOGE/status/1889113011282907434\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Monday evening post\u003c/a> on the X account for DOGE.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The post said, “the Department of Education terminated 89 contracts worth $881mm” and that “one contractor was paid $1.5mm to ‘observe mailing and clerical operations’ at a mail center.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a third source with extensive knowledge of many of these canceled Education Department contracts, who would not speak publicly for fear of retribution, told NPR that one shuttered program was already underway in classrooms — to study ways to help students nationwide make up for ground they’ve lost in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to this source, students in multiple states were already working with high-quality, adaptive digital tools. Now, with the cancellation of that contract, the study will be cut short, and the learning tools could soon be removed from classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The canceled contracts also include surveys and data collection on a range of issues, including private schools, homeschooling and career and technical education programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a decimation,” the source told NPR, “the destruction of knowing what works for kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s shocking, it’s pointless,” said Thomas Weko, a former commissioner at the NCES, referring to the halt in important research work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that the creation of IES was “an attempt to put our understanding of education on a scientific footing with other fields of knowledge like medicine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If contracts tied to IES and NCES are indeed terminated, and its research becomes unavailable online, a trove of data gathered over many decades about the state of education in the U.S. could become difficult to access. It’s unclear what these contract terminations would mean for future data collection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>According to the employees NPR spoke with, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), will be preserved, at least for now. NAEP, also known as The Nation’s Report Card, is \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270880/math-reading-covid-naep\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the gold standard in assessments of student achievement\u003c/a> and releases widely used data on how K-12 students are faring in core subjects including math and reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>President Trump has repeatedly said he plans to close the Education Department, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/31/nx-s1-5280417/federal-workers-workforce-facts-cuts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">employs more than 4,000 people\u003c/a> and has an annual budget of $79 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/02/09/g-s1-47504/trump-super-bowl-musk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told Fox News\u003c/a> in an interview that aired on Sunday: “I’m going to tell [Elon Musk] very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. He’s going to find the same thing. Then I’m going to go, go to the military. Let’s check the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In recent days, administration officials also placed dozens of Education Department employees \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/02/03/nx-s1-5282233/trump-to-make-big-cuts-to-education-department\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on paid administrative leave\u003c/a> with little explanation. At the time, the White House confirmed the president’s plans to shutter programs within the department that are not protected by law and his plans to call on Congress to close the department entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trump’s pick to be education secretary, Linda McMahon, is set to appear before Congress \u003ca href=\"https://www.help.senate.gov/rep/newsroom/press/next-week-senate-help-committee-to-hold-confirmation-hearing-on-nomination-for-secretary-of-education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on Thursday \u003c/a>for her confirmation hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"npr-transcript\">\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Transcript:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the key functions of the U.S. Education Department are being eliminated, such as conducting research about U.S. schools and colleges and the millions of students who attend them. This is some of the work done by the Institute of Education Sciences. But employees of the department tell NPR that many of the contracts IES oversees have now ended. NPR education reporter Jonaki Mehta has been following the story. So before we get to what you’re hearing from your sources about these latest cuts, what exactly does IES do?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: The institute is responsible for overseeing a lot of the data that tells us everything from how students are doing in school to what teaching methods best work to educate students, enrollment data, school choice programs, just a massive swath of research that shapes how the education system works. IES supports school districts, state agencies and educators who then take this data and put it to work in classrooms and beyond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTÍNEZ: OK. Now to the cuts. What are you hearing about the kinds of cuts being made?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Yeah, I spoke to two employees of IES. They didn’t want to be named because they fear losing their jobs. They both told me that Monday afternoon, they got an email from IES managers calling for an emergency meeting. And in that meeting, they were told that most of IES’ contracts were going to be canceled based on guidance from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as most people know it now. That’s the unit within the Trump administration that’s being run by Elon Musk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>IES heavily relies on contractors to do what it does. So without these contractors, that work is essentially halted. The employees I spoke to said the mood in that meeting was somber and some were holding back tears. And one of the workers said all the contracts that they oversee were already canceled by the end of the workday, so they and their colleagues are really wondering what this means for their jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTÍNEZ: Can you tell us, like, an example of one of the programs that might be threatened now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: So another source my colleague Cory Turner spoke to has extensive knowledge of many of these contracts we’re talking about. For example, they said there are some high-quality digital tools that are already being used in classrooms in many states to measure how kids can make up ground in math. It’s part of a study that IES was conducting, and now that that contract is canceled, the study is going to be cut short, and the tools could soon be pulled from classrooms. This source called these cuts, quote, “the destruction of knowing what works for kids.” And the Department of Education got back to me late last night linking to a post on X by DOGE that basically confirmed that DOGE has cut dozens of contracts worth millions of dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTÍNEZ: So, OK, government efficiency is actually in the name of that unit, DOGE. Could these cuts make the government more efficient?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: President Trump said over the weekend, efforts like these across the federal government will save billions, but one IES employee put it this way. DOGE wants to make the government more efficient, but the government just wasted millions of dollars today by cutting these contracts. And I want to add some of the research conducted by IES is mandated by Congress, and it’s not clear how those programs will be affected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTÍNEZ: So now I’m wondering, Jonaki, what this means for our understanding of the education system in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: That’s the big question. I spoke to a couple of researchers who say that they and their colleagues are furiously downloading data from IES because they’re afraid the whole website could go dark and decades of data could become really hard to access. And moving forward, we just don’t know what will happen to this research. Once these contracts are scrapped, they can’t just be restarted. There’s a long bureaucratic process to get them up and running.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MARTÍNEZ: NPR education reporter Jonaki Mehta, thanks a lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MEHTA: Thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the past decade, a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-science-of-reading-in-2024-5-state-initiatives-to-watch/2024/01\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">majority of states\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have passed new “science of reading” laws or implemented policies that emphasize phonics in classrooms. Yet the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/naep-test-2024-dismal-report/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2024 results\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of an important national test, released last month, showed that the reading scores of elementary and middle schoolers continued their long downward slide, hitting new lows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The emphasis on phonics in many schools is still relatively new and may need more time to yield results. But a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.aei.org/events/the-knowledge-revival/?mkt_tok=NDc1LVBCUS05NzEAAAGYdl0vHSBq7-XvUEtdwr_x5LJ4gfgDfMfrAPWnf6oK0A8pSmxo1Lp4eNuCuoxPvelQ1MMxtcIeCwgRa2uFQHyZIBzUdsOSpfRgMAW91y5dP6wa5g\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">growing chorus of education advocates\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> has been arguing that phonics isn’t enough. They say that being able to decode the letters and read words is critically important, but students also need to make sense of the words. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some educators are calling for schools to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://knowledgematterscampaign.org/post/webinar-knowledge-an-unsung-hero-of-reading-comprehension/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">adopt a curriculum that emphasizes content\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> along with phonics. More schools around the country, from \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.baltimorecp.org/resources/core-knowledge-lessons/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Baltimore\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/reading-comprehension-hinges-on-building-knowledge-new-curricula-aim-to-help/2024/01\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Michigan\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.libertycommon.org/about/news-and-events/colorado-core-knowledge-network\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Colorado\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, are adopting these content-filled lessons to teach geography, astronomy and even art history. The theory, which has been documented in a small number of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-0663.80.1.16\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">laboratory experiments\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, is that the more students already know about a topic, the better they can understand a passage about it. For example, a passage on farming might make more sense if you know something about how plants grow. The brain gets overwhelmed by too many new concepts and unfamiliar words. We’ve all been there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>\u003cb>A ‘Knowledge Revival’\u003c/b>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A 2025 book by 10 education researchers in Europe and Australia, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-74661-1\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,” makes the case that students cannot learn the skills of comprehension and critical thinking unless they know a lot of stuff first. These ideas have revived interest in E.D. Hirsch’s \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.coreknowledge.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Core Knowledge\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> curriculum, which gained popularity in the late 1980s. Hirsch, a professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia, argues that democracy benefits when the citizenry shares a body of knowledge and history, which he calls cultural literacy. Now it’s a cognitive science argument that a core curriculum is also good for our brains and facilitates learning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Related: Our free \u003c/b>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cb>weekly newsletter\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb> alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The idea of forcing children to learn a specific set of facts and topics is controversial. It runs counter to newer trends of “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://lmcreadinglist.pbworks.com/f/Ladson-Billings%20%281995%29.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">culturally relevant pedagogy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,” or “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nationalequityproject.org/culturally-responsive-teaching\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">culturally responsive teaching\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,” in which critics contend that students’ identities should be reflected in what they learn. Others say learning facts is unimportant in the age of Google where we can instantly look anything up, and that the focus should be on teaching skills. Content skeptics also point out that there’s never been a study to show that increasing knowledge of the world boosts reading scores.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It would be nearly impossible for an individual teacher to create the kind of content-packed curriculum that this pro-knowledge branch of education researchers has in mind. Lessons need to be coordinated across grades, from kindergarten onward. It’s not just a random collection of encyclopedia entries or interesting units on, say, Greek myths or the planets in our solar system. The science and social studies topics should be sequenced so that the ideas build upon each other, and paired with vocabulary that will be useful in the future. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The big question is whether the theory that more knowledge improves reading comprehension applies to real schools where children are reading below grade level. Does a content-packed curriculum translate into higher reading achievement years later?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Putting knowledge to the test\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Researchers have been testing content-packed lessons in schools to see how much they boost reading comprehension. A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://edworkingpapers.com/ai23-755\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2023 study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the Core Knowledge curriculum, which was not peer reviewed, received a lot of buzz. The students who attended nine schools that adopted the curriculum were stronger readers. But it was \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-inside-the-latest-reading-study-that-everyone-is-talking-about/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">impossible to tell whether the Core Knowledge curriculum itself made the difference\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or if the boost to reading scores could be attributed to the fact that all nine schools were highly regarded charter schools and were doing something else that made a difference. Perhaps they had hired great teachers and trained them well, for example. Also, the students at these charter schools were largely from middle and upper middle class families. What we really want to know is whether knowledge building at school helps the poorest children, who are less likely to be exposed to the world through travel, live performances, and other experiences that money can buy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another content-heavy curriculum developed by Harvard education professor James Kim produced a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-learning-science-might-help-kids-read-better/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">modest boost to reading scores in a randomized controlled trial\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, according to a paper \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-55174-001.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">published in 2024\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Reading instruction was untouched, but the students received special science and social studies lessons that were intended to boost young children’s knowledge and vocabulary. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit in the middle of the experiment and many of the lessons had to be scrapped. \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Still, for the 1,000 students who had received some of the special lessons in first and second grades, their reading and math scores on the North Carolina state tests were higher not only in third grade, but also in fourth grade, more than a year after the knowledge-building experiment ended. Most of the students were Black and Hispanic. Forty percent were from poor families.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>The latest study\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Core Knowledge curriculum was put to the test in \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-46446-001.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">another study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by a team of eight researchers in two unidentified cities in the mid-Atlantic and the South, where the majority of children were Black and from low income families. More than 20 schools had been randomly assigned to give kindergarteners some lessons from the Core Knowledge curriculum. The schools continued with their usual phonics instruction, but “read aloud” time, when a teacher ordinarily reads a picture book to students, had been replaced with units on plants, farming and Native Americans, for example. More than 500 kindergarteners looked at pictures on a large screen, while a teacher discussed the topics and taught new vocabulary. Additional activities reinforced the lessons. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-46446-001.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">paper published in the February 2025 issue\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the Journal of Education Psychology, the 565 children who received the Core Knowledge lessons did better on tests of the topics and words that were taught, compared with 626 children who had learned reading as usual and weren’t exposed to these topics. But they did no better in tests of general language, vocabulary development or listening comprehension. Reading itself was not evaluated. Unfortunately, the pandemic also interfered in the middle of this experiment and cut short the analysis of the students through first and second grades. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lead researcher Sonia Cabell, an associate professor at Florida State University, says she is looking at longer term achievement data from these students, who are now in middle school. But she said she isn’t seeing a clear “signal” that the students who had this Core Knowledge instruction for a few months in kindergarten are doing any better. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Glimmers of hope\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cabell did see glimmers of hope. Students in the control group schools, who didn’t receive Core Knowledge instruction, also learned about plants. But the Core Knowledge students had much more to say when researchers asked them the question: “Tell me everything you know about plants.” The results of a test of general science knowledge came just shy of statistical significance, which would have demonstrated that the Core Knowledge students were able to transfer the specific knowledge they had learned in the lessons to a broader understanding of science. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“There are pieces of this that are promising and encouraging,” said Cabell, who says that it’s complicated to study the combination of conventional reading instruction, such as phonics and vocabulary, with content knowledge. “We need to better understand what the active ingredient is. Is it the knowledge?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All the latest Core Knowledge study proves is that students are more likely to do well on a test of something they have been taught. Some observers errantly interpreted that as evidence that a knowledge rich curriculum is \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpsycnet.apa.org%2Ffulltext%2F2025-46446-001.html&src=typed_query\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">beneficial\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“If your great new curriculum reads articles about penguins to the kids and your old stupid curriculum reads articles about walruses to them, one of these is going to look more successful when the kids are evaluated with a penguin test,” explained Tim Shanahan, a literacy expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was not involved in this research.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Widening achievement gaps\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And distressingly, students who arrived at kindergarten with stronger language skills absorbed a lot more from these content-rich lessons than lower achieving students. Instead of helping low achieving kids catch up, achievement gaps widened.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People with more knowledge tend to be better readers. That’s not proof that increasing knowledge improves reading. It could be that higher achieving kids like learning about the world and enjoy reading. And if you stuff a child with more knowledge, it’s possible that his reading skills may not improve.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>The long view\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shanahan speculates that if knowledge building does improve reading comprehension, it would take many, many years for it to manifest. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“If these efforts aren’t allowed to elbow sound reading instruction aside, they cannot hurt and, in the long run, they might even help,” he wrote in a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/why-doesnt-increasing-knowledge-improve-reading-achievement\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2021 blog post\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Researchers are still in the early stages of designing and testing the content students need to boost literacy skills. We are all waiting for answers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-content-knowledge-reading/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Core Knowledge \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proof Points\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and other \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hechinger newsletters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the past decade, a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/the-science-of-reading-in-2024-5-state-initiatives-to-watch/2024/01\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">majority of states\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have passed new “science of reading” laws or implemented policies that emphasize phonics in classrooms. Yet the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/naep-test-2024-dismal-report/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2024 results\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of an important national test, released last month, showed that the reading scores of elementary and middle schoolers continued their long downward slide, hitting new lows.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The emphasis on phonics in many schools is still relatively new and may need more time to yield results. But a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.aei.org/events/the-knowledge-revival/?mkt_tok=NDc1LVBCUS05NzEAAAGYdl0vHSBq7-XvUEtdwr_x5LJ4gfgDfMfrAPWnf6oK0A8pSmxo1Lp4eNuCuoxPvelQ1MMxtcIeCwgRa2uFQHyZIBzUdsOSpfRgMAW91y5dP6wa5g\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">growing chorus of education advocates\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> has been arguing that phonics isn’t enough. They say that being able to decode the letters and read words is critically important, but students also need to make sense of the words. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some educators are calling for schools to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://knowledgematterscampaign.org/post/webinar-knowledge-an-unsung-hero-of-reading-comprehension/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">adopt a curriculum that emphasizes content\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> along with phonics. More schools around the country, from \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.baltimorecp.org/resources/core-knowledge-lessons/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Baltimore\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/reading-comprehension-hinges-on-building-knowledge-new-curricula-aim-to-help/2024/01\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Michigan\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.libertycommon.org/about/news-and-events/colorado-core-knowledge-network\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Colorado\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, are adopting these content-filled lessons to teach geography, astronomy and even art history. The theory, which has been documented in a small number of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-0663.80.1.16\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">laboratory experiments\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, is that the more students already know about a topic, the better they can understand a passage about it. For example, a passage on farming might make more sense if you know something about how plants grow. The brain gets overwhelmed by too many new concepts and unfamiliar words. We’ve all been there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>\u003cb>A ‘Knowledge Revival’\u003c/b>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A 2025 book by 10 education researchers in Europe and Australia, “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-74661-1\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,” makes the case that students cannot learn the skills of comprehension and critical thinking unless they know a lot of stuff first. These ideas have revived interest in E.D. Hirsch’s \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.coreknowledge.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Core Knowledge\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> curriculum, which gained popularity in the late 1980s. Hirsch, a professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia, argues that democracy benefits when the citizenry shares a body of knowledge and history, which he calls cultural literacy. Now it’s a cognitive science argument that a core curriculum is also good for our brains and facilitates learning. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Related: Our free \u003c/b>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cb>weekly newsletter\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb> alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The idea of forcing children to learn a specific set of facts and topics is controversial. It runs counter to newer trends of “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://lmcreadinglist.pbworks.com/f/Ladson-Billings%20%281995%29.pdf\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">culturally relevant pedagogy\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,” or “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nationalequityproject.org/culturally-responsive-teaching\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">culturally responsive teaching\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,” in which critics contend that students’ identities should be reflected in what they learn. Others say learning facts is unimportant in the age of Google where we can instantly look anything up, and that the focus should be on teaching skills. Content skeptics also point out that there’s never been a study to show that increasing knowledge of the world boosts reading scores.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It would be nearly impossible for an individual teacher to create the kind of content-packed curriculum that this pro-knowledge branch of education researchers has in mind. Lessons need to be coordinated across grades, from kindergarten onward. It’s not just a random collection of encyclopedia entries or interesting units on, say, Greek myths or the planets in our solar system. The science and social studies topics should be sequenced so that the ideas build upon each other, and paired with vocabulary that will be useful in the future. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The big question is whether the theory that more knowledge improves reading comprehension applies to real schools where children are reading below grade level. Does a content-packed curriculum translate into higher reading achievement years later?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Putting knowledge to the test\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Researchers have been testing content-packed lessons in schools to see how much they boost reading comprehension. A \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://edworkingpapers.com/ai23-755\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2023 study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the Core Knowledge curriculum, which was not peer reviewed, received a lot of buzz. The students who attended nine schools that adopted the curriculum were stronger readers. But it was \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-inside-the-latest-reading-study-that-everyone-is-talking-about/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">impossible to tell whether the Core Knowledge curriculum itself made the difference\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or if the boost to reading scores could be attributed to the fact that all nine schools were highly regarded charter schools and were doing something else that made a difference. Perhaps they had hired great teachers and trained them well, for example. Also, the students at these charter schools were largely from middle and upper middle class families. What we really want to know is whether knowledge building at school helps the poorest children, who are less likely to be exposed to the world through travel, live performances, and other experiences that money can buy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another content-heavy curriculum developed by Harvard education professor James Kim produced a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-learning-science-might-help-kids-read-better/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">modest boost to reading scores in a randomized controlled trial\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, according to a paper \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-55174-001.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">published in 2024\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Reading instruction was untouched, but the students received special science and social studies lessons that were intended to boost young children’s knowledge and vocabulary. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit in the middle of the experiment and many of the lessons had to be scrapped. \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Still, for the 1,000 students who had received some of the special lessons in first and second grades, their reading and math scores on the North Carolina state tests were higher not only in third grade, but also in fourth grade, more than a year after the knowledge-building experiment ended. Most of the students were Black and Hispanic. Forty percent were from poor families.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>The latest study\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Core Knowledge curriculum was put to the test in \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-46446-001.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">another study\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by a team of eight researchers in two unidentified cities in the mid-Atlantic and the South, where the majority of children were Black and from low income families. More than 20 schools had been randomly assigned to give kindergarteners some lessons from the Core Knowledge curriculum. The schools continued with their usual phonics instruction, but “read aloud” time, when a teacher ordinarily reads a picture book to students, had been replaced with units on plants, farming and Native Americans, for example. More than 500 kindergarteners looked at pictures on a large screen, while a teacher discussed the topics and taught new vocabulary. Additional activities reinforced the lessons. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-46446-001.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">paper published in the February 2025 issue\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the Journal of Education Psychology, the 565 children who received the Core Knowledge lessons did better on tests of the topics and words that were taught, compared with 626 children who had learned reading as usual and weren’t exposed to these topics. But they did no better in tests of general language, vocabulary development or listening comprehension. Reading itself was not evaluated. Unfortunately, the pandemic also interfered in the middle of this experiment and cut short the analysis of the students through first and second grades. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lead researcher Sonia Cabell, an associate professor at Florida State University, says she is looking at longer term achievement data from these students, who are now in middle school. But she said she isn’t seeing a clear “signal” that the students who had this Core Knowledge instruction for a few months in kindergarten are doing any better. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Glimmers of hope\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cabell did see glimmers of hope. Students in the control group schools, who didn’t receive Core Knowledge instruction, also learned about plants. But the Core Knowledge students had much more to say when researchers asked them the question: “Tell me everything you know about plants.” The results of a test of general science knowledge came just shy of statistical significance, which would have demonstrated that the Core Knowledge students were able to transfer the specific knowledge they had learned in the lessons to a broader understanding of science. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“There are pieces of this that are promising and encouraging,” said Cabell, who says that it’s complicated to study the combination of conventional reading instruction, such as phonics and vocabulary, with content knowledge. “We need to better understand what the active ingredient is. Is it the knowledge?” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All the latest Core Knowledge study proves is that students are more likely to do well on a test of something they have been taught. Some observers errantly interpreted that as evidence that a knowledge rich curriculum is \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpsycnet.apa.org%2Ffulltext%2F2025-46446-001.html&src=typed_query\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">beneficial\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. \u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“If your great new curriculum reads articles about penguins to the kids and your old stupid curriculum reads articles about walruses to them, one of these is going to look more successful when the kids are evaluated with a penguin test,” explained Tim Shanahan, a literacy expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was not involved in this research.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>Widening achievement gaps\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And distressingly, students who arrived at kindergarten with stronger language skills absorbed a lot more from these content-rich lessons than lower achieving students. Instead of helping low achieving kids catch up, achievement gaps widened.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People with more knowledge tend to be better readers. That’s not proof that increasing knowledge improves reading. It could be that higher achieving kids like learning about the world and enjoy reading. And if you stuff a child with more knowledge, it’s possible that his reading skills may not improve.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cb>The long view\u003c/b>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shanahan speculates that if knowledge building does improve reading comprehension, it would take many, many years for it to manifest. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“If these efforts aren’t allowed to elbow sound reading instruction aside, they cannot hurt and, in the long run, they might even help,” he wrote in a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/why-doesnt-increasing-knowledge-improve-reading-achievement\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2021 blog post\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Researchers are still in the early stages of designing and testing the content students need to boost literacy skills. We are all waiting for answers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This story about \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-content-knowledge-reading/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Core Knowledge \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proof Points\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and other \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hechinger newsletters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "What Does the US Department of Education Do? Some Facts About Its Role in Schools",
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"headTitle": "What Does the US Department of Education Do? Some Facts About Its Role in Schools | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Over and over, President Donald Trump and his colleagues have pointed to the U.S. Education Department as a poster child for government overreach. In fact, Republicans have been \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/opinion-republicans-keep-talking-about-abolishing-the-education-department-why/2023/10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>calling for the department’s dissolution\u003c/u>\u003c/a> ever since its birth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That effort reached a new level this week, as the president \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/02/03/nx-s1-5282233/trump-to-make-big-cuts-to-education-department\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>began exploring dramatic cuts\u003c/u>\u003c/a> to programs and staff at the department, including an executive action shuttering programs that are not protected by law and calling on Congress to close the department entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Which raises the question: What, exactly, does the Education Department do?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Created by Congress in 1979, the department employs \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/31/nx-s1-5280417/federal-workers-workforce-facts-cuts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>more than 4,000 people\u003c/u>\u003c/a> and has an annual budget of $79 billion. Many of its responsibilities were given to it by lawmakers. (The U.S. Constitution doesn’t actually mention a federal role in education.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a look at what the Education Department does and doesn’t do – and how much of it is protected by acts of Congress:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Sending money to U.S. public schools\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Most public school funding comes from state and local governments. The federal government, in general, provides only a small fraction of schools’ overall funding – between 6 and 13%, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-154\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>a 2018 report\u003c/u>\u003c/a> from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two of the most important federal funding streams to public schools are:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Title I, which provides money to help districts that serve lower-income communities.\u003c/strong> In 2023, the Education Department received \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/education-dept-sees-small-cut-in-funding-package-that-averted-government-shutdown/2024/03\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>more than $18 billion\u003c/u>\u003c/a> for Title I.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), which provides money to help districts serve students with disabilities.\u003c/strong> In FY 2024, the department received more than \u003ca href=\"https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R41833#:~:text=To%20implement%20IDEA%2C%20states%20and,based%20on%20a%20statutory%20formula.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>$15 billion\u003c/u>\u003c/a> for IDEA.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Both of these funding streams were, like the department itself, created by separate acts of Congress: Title I was signed into law in 1965, and IDEA was signed into law in 1975. They cannot be unwound except by Congress. Large changes to either are unlikely, as the money enjoys broad bipartisan support.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The department has no power over what’s taught in schools\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Over the years, Donald Trump has vowed to rid America’s schools of such ideas as “\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/trump-woke-education-24f864d83e2f5745d12a79ebac0d7cc4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>wokeness\u003c/u>\u003c/a>” and critical race theory. And he \u003ca href=\"https://rumble.com/v3hdtzq-agenda47-president-trumps-ten-principles-for-great-schools-leading-to-great.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>has said\u003c/u>\u003c/a> that he would close the Education Department in order to return “all education, and education work and needs back to the states.” In reality, it is already up to states to determine what is taught in classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is not the business of the federal government to be involved in curriculum or personnel hiring,” says Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Every Student Succeeds Act [ESSA], which was enacted during the tail end of the Obama years, really clearly laid [that] out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wong points out that ESSA was shaped, in part, by concerns that its predecessor, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), was teetering into government overreach. When NCLB was reauthorized in the form of ESSA, the law made it clear that it was up to states to determine what was taught in classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Managing college financial aid and federal student loans\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The Education Department is not only responsible for managing the federal student loan portfolio, which amounts to approximately $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, it’s also responsible for the mechanism that gives students access to college financial aid: the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>More than 17 million current and aspiring college students fill out the FAFSA each year in order to qualify for student loans, grants and more. For many, it’s the only way they can get help paying for college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students who end up taking out loans become part of the department’s massive student loan portfolio, which is managed by the office of Federal Student Aid (FSA). FSA “provides approximately $120.8 billion in grant, work-study, and loan funds each year to help students and their families pay for college or career school,” according to \u003ca href=\"https://studentaid.gov/about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>the office’s website\u003c/u>\u003c/a>. That includes $33 billion in Pell Grants for low-income and middle-income undergraduate students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>FSA also oversees student loan servicers, the outside companies it hires to work directly with borrowers on their loan payments, among other things.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Data collection on colleges and college students\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The department \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>maintains and collects data\u003c/u>\u003c/a> from every college, university, and technical and vocational program that participates in the federal student aid program. This allows tax-payers and families the ability to analyze, compare and track things like student admissions, academic outcomes, graduation rates, need-based aid eligibility, and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Tracking student achievement through the Nation’s Report Card\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The Education Department also oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or the “Nation’s Report Card.” It is considered the gold standard of student achievement tests in subjects such as reading, math and science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The assessment, which is mandated by Congress, actually predates the Department of Education: The federal government began administering the test in 1969, a decade before the department was created.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Nation’s Report Card has long served as a common yardstick for student achievement, and has been an especially valuable tool through, and since, the pandemic years. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270880/math-reading-covid-naep\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>In addition to shedding light on how much ground students lost academically,\u003c/u>\u003c/a> it has also helped the country track chronic absenteeism, poverty levels and educational experiences of students. The data generated by NAEP is then used by educators, policymakers and researchers to work towards improving K-12 education across the country.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Over and over, President Donald Trump and his colleagues have pointed to the U.S. Education Department as a poster child for government overreach. In fact, Republicans have been \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/opinion-republicans-keep-talking-about-abolishing-the-education-department-why/2023/10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>calling for the department’s dissolution\u003c/u>\u003c/a> ever since its birth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That effort reached a new level this week, as the president \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/02/03/nx-s1-5282233/trump-to-make-big-cuts-to-education-department\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>began exploring dramatic cuts\u003c/u>\u003c/a> to programs and staff at the department, including an executive action shuttering programs that are not protected by law and calling on Congress to close the department entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Which raises the question: What, exactly, does the Education Department do?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Created by Congress in 1979, the department employs \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/31/nx-s1-5280417/federal-workers-workforce-facts-cuts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>more than 4,000 people\u003c/u>\u003c/a> and has an annual budget of $79 billion. Many of its responsibilities were given to it by lawmakers. (The U.S. Constitution doesn’t actually mention a federal role in education.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a look at what the Education Department does and doesn’t do – and how much of it is protected by acts of Congress:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Sending money to U.S. public schools\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Most public school funding comes from state and local governments. The federal government, in general, provides only a small fraction of schools’ overall funding – between 6 and 13%, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-154\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>a 2018 report\u003c/u>\u003c/a> from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two of the most important federal funding streams to public schools are:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>Title I, which provides money to help districts that serve lower-income communities.\u003c/strong> In 2023, the Education Department received \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/education-dept-sees-small-cut-in-funding-package-that-averted-government-shutdown/2024/03\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>more than $18 billion\u003c/u>\u003c/a> for Title I.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cstrong>IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), which provides money to help districts serve students with disabilities.\u003c/strong> In FY 2024, the department received more than \u003ca href=\"https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R41833#:~:text=To%20implement%20IDEA%2C%20states%20and,based%20on%20a%20statutory%20formula.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>$15 billion\u003c/u>\u003c/a> for IDEA.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Both of these funding streams were, like the department itself, created by separate acts of Congress: Title I was signed into law in 1965, and IDEA was signed into law in 1975. They cannot be unwound except by Congress. Large changes to either are unlikely, as the money enjoys broad bipartisan support.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The department has no power over what’s taught in schools\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Over the years, Donald Trump has vowed to rid America’s schools of such ideas as “\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/trump-woke-education-24f864d83e2f5745d12a79ebac0d7cc4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>wokeness\u003c/u>\u003c/a>” and critical race theory. And he \u003ca href=\"https://rumble.com/v3hdtzq-agenda47-president-trumps-ten-principles-for-great-schools-leading-to-great.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>has said\u003c/u>\u003c/a> that he would close the Education Department in order to return “all education, and education work and needs back to the states.” In reality, it is already up to states to determine what is taught in classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is not the business of the federal government to be involved in curriculum or personnel hiring,” says Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Every Student Succeeds Act [ESSA], which was enacted during the tail end of the Obama years, really clearly laid [that] out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wong points out that ESSA was shaped, in part, by concerns that its predecessor, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), was teetering into government overreach. When NCLB was reauthorized in the form of ESSA, the law made it clear that it was up to states to determine what was taught in classrooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Managing college financial aid and federal student loans\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The Education Department is not only responsible for managing the federal student loan portfolio, which amounts to approximately $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, it’s also responsible for the mechanism that gives students access to college financial aid: the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>More than 17 million current and aspiring college students fill out the FAFSA each year in order to qualify for student loans, grants and more. For many, it’s the only way they can get help paying for college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students who end up taking out loans become part of the department’s massive student loan portfolio, which is managed by the office of Federal Student Aid (FSA). FSA “provides approximately $120.8 billion in grant, work-study, and loan funds each year to help students and their families pay for college or career school,” according to \u003ca href=\"https://studentaid.gov/about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>the office’s website\u003c/u>\u003c/a>. That includes $33 billion in Pell Grants for low-income and middle-income undergraduate students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>FSA also oversees student loan servicers, the outside companies it hires to work directly with borrowers on their loan payments, among other things.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Data collection on colleges and college students\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The department \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>maintains and collects data\u003c/u>\u003c/a> from every college, university, and technical and vocational program that participates in the federal student aid program. This allows tax-payers and families the ability to analyze, compare and track things like student admissions, academic outcomes, graduation rates, need-based aid eligibility, and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Tracking student achievement through the Nation’s Report Card\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The Education Department also oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or the “Nation’s Report Card.” It is considered the gold standard of student achievement tests in subjects such as reading, math and science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The assessment, which is mandated by Congress, actually predates the Department of Education: The federal government began administering the test in 1969, a decade before the department was created.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Nation’s Report Card has long served as a common yardstick for student achievement, and has been an especially valuable tool through, and since, the pandemic years. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5270880/math-reading-covid-naep\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cu>In addition to shedding light on how much ground students lost academically,\u003c/u>\u003c/a> it has also helped the country track chronic absenteeism, poverty levels and educational experiences of students. The data generated by NAEP is then used by educators, policymakers and researchers to work towards improving K-12 education across the country.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "reading-and-math-scores-in-latest-national-report-card-highlight-covid-and-pre-covid-trends",
"title": "Reading and Math Scores in Latest National Report Card Highlight COVID and Pre-COVID Trends",
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"headTitle": "Reading and Math Scores in Latest National Report Card Highlight COVID and Pre-COVID Trends | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Stay on top of articles like this one by subscribing to the weekly \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/newsletters/mindshift\">MindShift email newsletter\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAlmost five years have passed since COVID-19 first disrupted America’s schools, and new data, known as the Nation’s Report Card, offers cause for hope — and concern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news: In math, many students have made up at least some of the academic ground they lost during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bad news: In both reading and math, most fourth- and eighth-graders in 2024 still performed \u003cem>below\u003c/em> pre-pandemic 2019 levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s more, while these achievement declines were exacerbated by the pandemic, they appear to have begun even before COVID-19, raising important questions about why students are still struggling and what educators and policymakers can do about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news arrives as the nation’s public schools have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/03/20/1239609135/the-190-billion-in-emergency-funds-given-to-schools-during-the-pandemic-is-endin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">largely spent the $190 billion\u003c/a> in federal emergency funding they received from Congress to help pay for, among other things, research-backed interventions, including summer school and tutoring. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/06/18/nx-s1-5010963/schools-aid-students-pandemic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Previous research\u003c/a> suggests that money did lead to modest academic gains, though this new data shows students still have a long way to go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which provides data for the Nation’s Report Card, is mandated by Congress and is the largest nationally representative test of student learning. NAEP tests were first administered \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/timeline.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in 1969\u003c/a>. Today, the assessments in math and reading are given every two years to a broad sample of students in fourth and eighth grades.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Students held steady in math or even made up ground\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In fourth grade, the average math score ticked up slightly compared with 2022, ending a pandemic slide. In fact, white, Black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students all showed modest gains, on average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In fourth grade, it seems that, regardless of where students were, they were improving,” says Lisa Ashe, a math consultant with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets NAEP policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That said, fourth-grade math scores still remained \u003cem>below\u003c/em> pre-pandemic 2019 levels, with one exception: Alabama was the only state where fourth-graders’ average math scores surpassed 2019 scores. (In 2022, lawmakers there \u003ca href=\"https://www.the74million.org/article/principals-view-how-alabama-is-leading-the-way-in-solving-the-math-crisis/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">passed a law\u003c/a> aimed at improving math proficiency for all K-5 students in the state.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But COVID-19 isn’t all to blame. A longer view of fourth-graders’ math scores — and student achievement more broadly — shows those scores began stagnating and even declining \u003cem>before\u003c/em> the pandemic. Math scores peaked around 2013. Multiple education researchers tell NPR \u003ca href=\"https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Testing-Theories-of-Why.pdf?x85095\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">they aren’t sure why\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width: 650px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65158\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024.jpg\" alt=\"A chart showing math and reading scores going up, then down, then holding steady.\" width=\"1924\" height=\"1424\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024.jpg 1924w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-800x592.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-1020x755.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-768x568.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-1536x1137.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-1920x1421.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1924px) 100vw, 1924px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That is the multitrillion-dollar question,” says Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the University of Washington who has studied pandemic learning loss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One thing we know is that fourth-grade math performance improved around the same time the old federal education law known as No Child Left Behind (signed in 2002) enforced strict new accountability requirements. When those requirements were \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/ten-states-get-nclb-waivers-new-mexico-has-to-wait/2012/02\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">phased\u003c/a> out (beginning in \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/26-states-plus-d-c-apply-for-nclb-waivers-in-second-round/2012/02\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2012\u003c/a>) and ultimately replaced (in 2015), math performance, especially among lower-performers, fell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s just one possible explanation for the slowdown that the pandemic worsened. Goldhaber suggests learning could also have been set back by the Great Recession, by kids’ increased access to smartphones and tablets or by the ripple effects of a decline in kids reading for fun. (Since 2017, fewer and fewer students have reported to NAEP that they enjoy reading.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s important to understand what caused that earlier stagnation if we’re going to get out of the mire of the pandemic,” Goldhaber says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For eighth-graders, math scores held steady in 2024 compared with 2022. But as with fourth-graders, they remained below pre-pandemic 2019 levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s more, the Nation’s Report Card highlights some worrying divergence happening within those scores. The highest-performing eighth-graders \u003cem>improved\u003c/em> in math compared with 2022, but the lowest-performing students moved in the opposite direction, losing ground in 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That actually caused alarm,” Ashe says of the widening achievement gap. “We need to meet the needs of these students that are in the lower percentiles, because something that we’re doing is not working for those students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Overall, 39% of fourth-graders and 28% of eighth-graders scored at or above NAEP’s standard for proficiency in math. That’s a little better than in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The NAEP report warns against comparing these results to state-reported numbers, as “the NAEP standard for proficiency represents competency over challenging subject matter, a standard that exceeds most states’ standards for proficient or grade-level achievement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Reading: The bad news got worse\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The results in reading weren’t nearly as hopeful as they were in math:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fourth-graders continued to lose ground in 2024, with reading scores slightly lower, on average, than they were in 2022 and much lower than they were in 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2019, 35% of fourth-graders scored at or above the test’s reading proficiency standard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That figure dropped to 33% in 2022 and, further, to 31%, in 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with math, these declines aren’t entirely the fault of the pandemic. Fourth-grade reading scores began falling years earlier, around 2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only one state, Louisiana, saw its 2024 fourth-grade reading scores surpass 2019 scores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65160\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024.jpg\" alt=\"Graph showing reading scores that peak in 2017 and then gradually decline. \" width=\"1970\" height=\"1454\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024.jpg 1970w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-800x590.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-1020x753.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-768x567.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-1536x1134.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-1920x1417.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1970px) 100vw, 1970px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s worth remembering: This current round of fourth-graders, from the 2023-2024 school year, were in kindergarten when the pandemic first closed schools, and many spent some or all of first grade learning \u003cem>remotely\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eighth-graders’ 2024 reading scores also dropped compared with 2022, with just 30% of students performing at or above NAEP’s proficient standard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NAEP classifies students at one of three skill levels: advanced, proficient or the lowest, basic. According to the results, the share of eighth-graders reading \u003cem>below\u003c/em> NAEP’s basic standard “was the largest in the assessment’s history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not only that, but the worst-performing readers in 2024 scored “lower than our lower performers did 30 years ago for fourth \u003cem>and\u003c/em> eighth grade. That’s how low these scores historically have dropped,” says Peggy Carr, commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not one state improved its eighth-grade reading scores compared with 2022, let alone 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The connection between poverty and performance\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This year’s NAEP results include a new, more precise index for determining students’ socioeconomic status (SES), and the results show, in stark detail, what teachers and researchers have long understood: That poverty and performance are deeply connected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the overwhelming majority (77%) of fourth-grade students in the highest SES category — the wealthiest kids — performed above the national average in reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of the fourth-graders in the lowest SES category, though, the results are nearly flipped, with just 34% performing above the national average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results in math performance were similarly disparate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a positive note, while many big-city districts made important gains in fourth-grade math with their economically disadvantaged students, a handful of districts did \u003cem>exceptionally\u003c/em> well, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina, Guilford County Schools (also in North Carolina), Baltimore City Public Schools and the San Diego Unified School District.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Missing school is getting in the way of learning\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When students took the latest NAEP assessments, in early 2024, they were asked how many days they had been absent the previous month. The results are slightly encouraging: A smaller percentage of fourth- and eighth-graders reported missing five or more days of school in the past month compared with 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But across the board, lower-performing students were more likely to report missing five or more days of school in the previous month, compared with higher-performing students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simply put, missing school means missing learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/06/14/1247805147/solutions-kindergarten-attendance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">miss 10% or more of a school year\u003c/a>, they’re considered “chronically absent,” and as \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160358099/school-attendance-chronic-absenteeism-covid\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR has previously reported\u003c/a>, the rates of chronic absenteeism doubled during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The link that NAEP shows between missing school and lower academic achievement doesn’t surprise Hedy Chang, head of Attendance Works, an organization devoted to fighting chronic absenteeism. “It’s not just affecting academics,” she says of absenteeism. “It’s affecting social development and executive functioning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To continue on the path of improving attendance and in turn student achievement, Chang suggests that districts look at the students who are missing the most school and the hurdles they’re facing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You might not be able to take it all, tackle it all, at once,” Chang says. “You might have to tackle it in bits and pieces, either by barrier or by grade or by this subset of schools.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says making sure \u003cem>all \u003c/em>students are going to school could go a long way in bolstering student achievement.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Stay on top of articles like this one by subscribing to the weekly \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/newsletters/mindshift\">MindShift email newsletter\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nAlmost five years have passed since COVID-19 first disrupted America’s schools, and new data, known as the Nation’s Report Card, offers cause for hope — and concern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news: In math, many students have made up at least some of the academic ground they lost during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bad news: In both reading and math, most fourth- and eighth-graders in 2024 still performed \u003cem>below\u003c/em> pre-pandemic 2019 levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s more, while these achievement declines were exacerbated by the pandemic, they appear to have begun even before COVID-19, raising important questions about why students are still struggling and what educators and policymakers can do about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The news arrives as the nation’s public schools have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/03/20/1239609135/the-190-billion-in-emergency-funds-given-to-schools-during-the-pandemic-is-endin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">largely spent the $190 billion\u003c/a> in federal emergency funding they received from Congress to help pay for, among other things, research-backed interventions, including summer school and tutoring. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/06/18/nx-s1-5010963/schools-aid-students-pandemic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Previous research\u003c/a> suggests that money did lead to modest academic gains, though this new data shows students still have a long way to go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which provides data for the Nation’s Report Card, is mandated by Congress and is the largest nationally representative test of student learning. NAEP tests were first administered \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/timeline.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in 1969\u003c/a>. Today, the assessments in math and reading are given every two years to a broad sample of students in fourth and eighth grades.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Students held steady in math or even made up ground\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In fourth grade, the average math score ticked up slightly compared with 2022, ending a pandemic slide. In fact, white, Black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students all showed modest gains, on average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In fourth grade, it seems that, regardless of where students were, they were improving,” says Lisa Ashe, a math consultant with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets NAEP policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That said, fourth-grade math scores still remained \u003cem>below\u003c/em> pre-pandemic 2019 levels, with one exception: Alabama was the only state where fourth-graders’ average math scores surpassed 2019 scores. (In 2022, lawmakers there \u003ca href=\"https://www.the74million.org/article/principals-view-how-alabama-is-leading-the-way-in-solving-the-math-crisis/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">passed a law\u003c/a> aimed at improving math proficiency for all K-5 students in the state.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But COVID-19 isn’t all to blame. A longer view of fourth-graders’ math scores — and student achievement more broadly — shows those scores began stagnating and even declining \u003cem>before\u003c/em> the pandemic. Math scores peaked around 2013. Multiple education researchers tell NPR \u003ca href=\"https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Testing-Theories-of-Why.pdf?x85095\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">they aren’t sure why\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width: 650px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65158\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024.jpg\" alt=\"A chart showing math and reading scores going up, then down, then holding steady.\" width=\"1924\" height=\"1424\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024.jpg 1924w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-800x592.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-1020x755.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-768x568.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-1536x1137.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-scores-1990-2024-1920x1421.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1924px) 100vw, 1924px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That is the multitrillion-dollar question,” says Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the University of Washington who has studied pandemic learning loss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One thing we know is that fourth-grade math performance improved around the same time the old federal education law known as No Child Left Behind (signed in 2002) enforced strict new accountability requirements. When those requirements were \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/ten-states-get-nclb-waivers-new-mexico-has-to-wait/2012/02\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">phased\u003c/a> out (beginning in \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/26-states-plus-d-c-apply-for-nclb-waivers-in-second-round/2012/02\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2012\u003c/a>) and ultimately replaced (in 2015), math performance, especially among lower-performers, fell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s just one possible explanation for the slowdown that the pandemic worsened. Goldhaber suggests learning could also have been set back by the Great Recession, by kids’ increased access to smartphones and tablets or by the ripple effects of a decline in kids reading for fun. (Since 2017, fewer and fewer students have reported to NAEP that they enjoy reading.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s important to understand what caused that earlier stagnation if we’re going to get out of the mire of the pandemic,” Goldhaber says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For eighth-graders, math scores held steady in 2024 compared with 2022. But as with fourth-graders, they remained below pre-pandemic 2019 levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s more, the Nation’s Report Card highlights some worrying divergence happening within those scores. The highest-performing eighth-graders \u003cem>improved\u003c/em> in math compared with 2022, but the lowest-performing students moved in the opposite direction, losing ground in 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That actually caused alarm,” Ashe says of the widening achievement gap. “We need to meet the needs of these students that are in the lower percentiles, because something that we’re doing is not working for those students.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Overall, 39% of fourth-graders and 28% of eighth-graders scored at or above NAEP’s standard for proficiency in math. That’s a little better than in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The NAEP report warns against comparing these results to state-reported numbers, as “the NAEP standard for proficiency represents competency over challenging subject matter, a standard that exceeds most states’ standards for proficient or grade-level achievement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Reading: The bad news got worse\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The results in reading weren’t nearly as hopeful as they were in math:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fourth-graders continued to lose ground in 2024, with reading scores slightly lower, on average, than they were in 2022 and much lower than they were in 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2019, 35% of fourth-graders scored at or above the test’s reading proficiency standard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That figure dropped to 33% in 2022 and, further, to 31%, in 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As with math, these declines aren’t entirely the fault of the pandemic. Fourth-grade reading scores began falling years earlier, around 2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only one state, Louisiana, saw its 2024 fourth-grade reading scores surpass 2019 scores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65160\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024.jpg\" alt=\"Graph showing reading scores that peak in 2017 and then gradually decline. \" width=\"1970\" height=\"1454\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024.jpg 1970w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-800x590.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-1020x753.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-768x567.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-1536x1134.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2025/01/NPR-NAEP-Reading-Scores-1992-2024-1920x1417.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1970px) 100vw, 1970px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s worth remembering: This current round of fourth-graders, from the 2023-2024 school year, were in kindergarten when the pandemic first closed schools, and many spent some or all of first grade learning \u003cem>remotely\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eighth-graders’ 2024 reading scores also dropped compared with 2022, with just 30% of students performing at or above NAEP’s proficient standard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NAEP classifies students at one of three skill levels: advanced, proficient or the lowest, basic. According to the results, the share of eighth-graders reading \u003cem>below\u003c/em> NAEP’s basic standard “was the largest in the assessment’s history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not only that, but the worst-performing readers in 2024 scored “lower than our lower performers did 30 years ago for fourth \u003cem>and\u003c/em> eighth grade. That’s how low these scores historically have dropped,” says Peggy Carr, commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not one state improved its eighth-grade reading scores compared with 2022, let alone 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The connection between poverty and performance\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>This year’s NAEP results include a new, more precise index for determining students’ socioeconomic status (SES), and the results show, in stark detail, what teachers and researchers have long understood: That poverty and performance are deeply connected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the overwhelming majority (77%) of fourth-grade students in the highest SES category — the wealthiest kids — performed above the national average in reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of the fourth-graders in the lowest SES category, though, the results are nearly flipped, with just 34% performing above the national average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results in math performance were similarly disparate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a positive note, while many big-city districts made important gains in fourth-grade math with their economically disadvantaged students, a handful of districts did \u003cem>exceptionally\u003c/em> well, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina, Guilford County Schools (also in North Carolina), Baltimore City Public Schools and the San Diego Unified School District.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Missing school is getting in the way of learning\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When students took the latest NAEP assessments, in early 2024, they were asked how many days they had been absent the previous month. The results are slightly encouraging: A smaller percentage of fourth- and eighth-graders reported missing five or more days of school in the past month compared with 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But across the board, lower-performing students were more likely to report missing five or more days of school in the previous month, compared with higher-performing students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simply put, missing school means missing learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/06/14/1247805147/solutions-kindergarten-attendance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">miss 10% or more of a school year\u003c/a>, they’re considered “chronically absent,” and as \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160358099/school-attendance-chronic-absenteeism-covid\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR has previously reported\u003c/a>, the rates of chronic absenteeism doubled during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The link that NAEP shows between missing school and lower academic achievement doesn’t surprise Hedy Chang, head of Attendance Works, an organization devoted to fighting chronic absenteeism. “It’s not just affecting academics,” she says of absenteeism. “It’s affecting social development and executive functioning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To continue on the path of improving attendance and in turn student achievement, Chang suggests that districts look at the students who are missing the most school and the hurdles they’re facing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You might not be able to take it all, tackle it all, at once,” Chang says. “You might have to tackle it in bits and pieces, either by barrier or by grade or by this subset of schools.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says making sure \u003cem>all \u003c/em>students are going to school could go a long way in bolstering student achievement.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A Researcher Said the Evidence on Special Education Inclusion is Flawed. Readers Weighed In",
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"headTitle": "A Researcher Said the Evidence on Special Education Inclusion is Flawed. Readers Weighed In | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>I am always happy when my work generates a public discussion. That happened after a January \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-special-education-inclusion-research-flawed/\">column\u003c/a> I wrote about a prominent scholar’s critique of the evidence for including children with disabilities in general education classrooms. Advocates, parents and teachers argued for inclusion, against inclusion and for some hybrid of the two. The director of education at the Learning Disabilities Association of America weighed in, as did the commissioner of special education research at the U.S. Department of Education. More than 160 people commented on one \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/specialed/comments/1i0iyat/a_prominent_professor_of_special_education_argues/\">Reddit discussion\u003c/a> about the story. Here’s a sampling of views I received or saw on social media. (\u003cem>Comments were lightly edited for clarity\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Inclusion in the general education classroom is a ‘human right’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Abby Taylor recently earned her doctorate in special education at Vanderbilt University, where Douglas Fuchs, the author of the controversial paper, is a professor. She is now an adjunct professor of special education at the University of West Georgia. According to her \u003ca href=\"https://www.westga.edu/profile.php?emp_id=94150\">professional biography\u003c/a>, her passion is in supporting special education inclusion and she has taught in an inclusive preschool classroom. Taylor emailed me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>We are always working towards supporting people’s understanding of inclusion as a human right and not as an intervention or variable in a research study. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Given that segregation is inherently flawed and unethical regardless of how students perform, it is critical to recognize our country’s systemic educational barriers for students with disabilities even within the context of inclusion (thus, preventing students with disabilities from achieving their full potential even within inclusive settings).…This published article alone perpetuates harmful rhetoric that leads to the further exclusion and mistreatment of children with disabilities despite their legally mandated right to inclusion in the general education setting.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Higher test scores aren’t the only or even the most important goal\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Chris Yarrell, an attorney at the \u003ca href=\"https://cleweb.org/about-cle/\">Center for Law and Education\u003c/a>, which advocates for low-income students, posted \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/chrisyarrell.bsky.social/post/3lg2f66bi5k2q\">his thoughts\u003c/a> on Bluesky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The article notes that Dr. Fuchs “is concentrating on academic outcomes” and acknowledges that inclusion may have “psychological or social benefits” that were [not] studied. Yet, this seems to imply that these benefits are less relevant to students’ academic success\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Social or psychological benefits—like peer interaction, belonging, and reduced isolation—aren’t incidental to learning/academic achievement. They’re foundational. A sense of inclusion and connection creates the conditions for academic engagement and success.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Opting for private school\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Beth Netherland, who says she is the mother of a child with learning struggles, \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/BethNetherland/status/1879352651579871356\">posted\u003c/a> on X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The problem w/ gen Ed & special ed is that both typically use low value practices. My son w/ ADHD & speech/ language difficulties (DevLangDis) received early & intensive literacy interventions, & he’s thriving in general Ed classes at a private Catholic school. Straight A’s.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Most families would be okay w/ some pull out services if the school actually used evidence based methods. Most of the time that’s not the case. They’re either warehousing our children in sped [special education] or warehousing them in gen Ed. It’s a travesty.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nicole Bucka says she is the mother of a child with disabilities and is a multi-tiered system of supports (\u003ca href=\"https://mtss4success.org/essential-components\">MTSS\u003c/a>) specialist, which is one approach to supporting children who are struggling in school, including those with disabilities in a general education classroom. She \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/nbucka.bsky.social/post/3lfp5l2h45s2f\">posted\u003c/a> on Bluesky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Inclusion is not my priority. My top concern? My son learning skills (like reading and life skills). I know my kid and he wouldn’t learn optimally in inclusive settings. This article is the first time I’ve seen this complexity well represented.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Poor instruction and progress for students with learning disabilities\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Monica McHale-Small is the director of education at the Learning Disabilities Association of America, which advocates for children with dyslexia and other learning struggles. She emailed me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The outcome of inclusion for students with SLD [students with learning disabilities] is frequently less than positive.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>In my advocacy work at LDA [Learning Disabilities Association] as well as during my 27 years in public schools in Pennsylvania, I cannot tell you how often I see situations where students have an IEP [individualized education programs for students who are diagnosed with a disability], spend the majority or all of their time in the general education classroom, and have made frighteningly little academic progress. Often, these children are being given A’s and B‘s on their report cards but standardized assessments indicate their reading and/or math skills have stagnated and the gap between them and their non-disabled peers grows each year. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Frustrated teachers\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A sixth grade teacher in Texas asked me not to publish her name. In an email, she told me how hard it is to give her students with disabilities the attention they need in her general education classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I do believe they are at a disservice due to the nonexistent one-on-one academic support they need in the general education classroom\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She also described how special education professionals periodically observe her classroom and tell her how to instruct the student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Unfortunately, the observer lacks the realization of the other students’ educational needs as well. I feel inadequate, but mostly disheartened when a student with disabilities is “thrown to the wolves” and there is not a classroom environment that’s beneficial for the student’s academics and social skills.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another unnamed teacher, who goes by the social media handle @yvrteacher, identified herself as a mom and an educator. She \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/yvrteacher/status/1879537552014926117\">posted\u003c/a> this on X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Almost nowhere actually does inclusion well so it’s no wonder it’s not successful. I’ve never seen a properly implemented inclusion model in 22 years of teaching. I do believe with adequate supports and people, it could work. No one will pay for that though.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>No mention of preschoolers \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Karen Nemeth is the founder of Language Castle, which is involved in early childhood dual language education. Nemeth previously was a child care and preschool agency grant and project manager, and an education specialist for the New Jersey Department of Education. She \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/karennemethlc.bsky.social/post/3lfqatpgedk2w\">posted\u003c/a> on Bluesky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>When you see this article, please join in shouting “THIS REPORT DOES NOT MENTION PRESCHOOL” to alert any headline-only readers so they can avoid misinterpreting this for use in early childhood education. Are you with me?\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Flawed research\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Don Magnuson, a therapeutic recreation specialist in St. Paul, Minnesota, emailed me about his experience as a college student assisting in studies of including people with disabilities in parks and recreation programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I witnessed how researchers could intentionally design the study to get the results they wanted, which made it neither valid nor reliable. It was driven by a political agenda, not by good science. Sadly, this research was often used to close down adaptive programs or not allow new adaptive programs to get started, causing actual harm to people with disabilities.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>In my profession back in the late 1980s and 1990s, including people with disabilities in regular parks and recreation programs was all the rage, largely fueled by flawed research. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>It takes courage for anyone to question the dominant narrative…There is resistance, of course, because so many people have staked their entire academic reputations on inclusion and don’t have the intellectual humility to concede that they might have been wrong.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Financial constraints\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Justin Baeder, a former public school principal in Seattle who now conducts professional development for school leaders, posted a \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/eduleadership/status/1880020011487465965\">video commentary\u003c/a> on X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I’ve been saying for a while now, without this type of evidence, that I don’t think inclusion works as well as we’re being told…If you have a student who needs a quiet classroom, who needs a calm environment, who needs a room with fewer kids in it and more adults, and not quite as much going on because they get overstimulated or there are lots of reasons that a kid might need a different type of classroom. I think often when inclusion is put in the IEP [individualized education program], it’s to save money. It’s because inclusion is what’s available. It’s not because inclusion is what the kid actually needs. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A music education professor who uses the name Blue Octäve Cult on Bluesky \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/blueoctavecult.bsky.social/post/3lfs65fcjhk23\">wrote this\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Investing in the general ed classroom will never happen because they’ve been increasing class sizes for the last 30 years. The policymakers are clearly on the side of [a] “do more with less” business model where instruction is the product rather than a process.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A future research agenda \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Nathan Jones is the commissioner of the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER), which funds studies on the instruction of students with disabilities. Jones is on leave from Boston University, where he is a professor of special education. His six-year term at the Department of Education began in 2023. After my story came out, Jones both emailed and talked to me and my colleague Meredith Kolodner, who is also reporting about special education. This is some of what he had to say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Jones’ own research before he joined the administration, he found that more time spent in general education classrooms was associated with a \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07419325241268747\">“slight” improvement in academic outcomes\u003c/a>. Also, over the past 20 years, new reading and math interventions have been created and tested for children with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>There is a body of evidence that supports intensive instruction for many students. I think he [Fuchs] is exactly right there.\u003c/em>..\u003cem>I don’t think that it’s at cross purposes to value inclusion while at the same time valuing students getting the academic support that they need. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Special education has such a history of seclusion and separation and segregation that having nuanced arguments is hard. Even to say something like “supplemental” or “pull out” implies that a student is being robbed of the opportunity to receive instruction with their same-age peers. But I think if you were to explain it to educators or explain it to parents in terms of what students were actually getting, I think you would probably find a lot of agreement for providing students [with] supports for success in the general education curriculum. I think that would have pretty wide popularity, but the semantics of it is really tricky.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones wants to fund more studies to show how to do inclusion effectively, but also how to bring the basket of new interventions to more students.* So far, these interventions have been tested on only small groups of students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>We have evidence here and there, but it’s not sufficient evidence to provide clear guidance to folks that are making decisions.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are practical concerns, too, Jones said. Where are the extra classrooms for students to receive reading interventions when they are pulled out of their regular classes? Which regular classes should students skip to receive their interventions?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones worries most about the shortage of well-qualified teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>We have evidence from at least one state that support staff such as paraeducators have shortages even worse than our special educators. And in most states, general educators are not required to take more than a single course to support kids with disabilities.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I get stressed out wherever we put kids. I’m not sure where the well-qualified personnel are. If you’re making an argument for inclusion, I think you also have to make an argument that the educators providing that instruction have received sufficient training to support those students. And simultaneously, if you’re making an argument that we need well-qualified special educators providing that instruction, then you have to grapple with the fact that schools don’t have them in many cases.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A tough discussion\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Clearly, many readers are passionate about helping students with disabilities. No matter their point of view, they would probably all agree with what Ashlyn, who goes by the handle \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/swingonastar3\">@swingonastar3\u003c/a>, posted on X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>We need to have a tough discussion about inclusion. It’s time\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>*Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly characterized how NCSER supports education research. It funds studies initiated by outside researchers. \u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Contact staff writer \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/author/jill-barshay/\">\u003cem>Jill Barshay\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-readers-react-special-education-inclusion/\">\u003cem>inclusion in schools\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I am always happy when my work generates a public discussion. That happened after a January \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-special-education-inclusion-research-flawed/\">column\u003c/a> I wrote about a prominent scholar’s critique of the evidence for including children with disabilities in general education classrooms. Advocates, parents and teachers argued for inclusion, against inclusion and for some hybrid of the two. The director of education at the Learning Disabilities Association of America weighed in, as did the commissioner of special education research at the U.S. Department of Education. More than 160 people commented on one \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/specialed/comments/1i0iyat/a_prominent_professor_of_special_education_argues/\">Reddit discussion\u003c/a> about the story. Here’s a sampling of views I received or saw on social media. (\u003cem>Comments were lightly edited for clarity\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Inclusion in the general education classroom is a ‘human right’\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Abby Taylor recently earned her doctorate in special education at Vanderbilt University, where Douglas Fuchs, the author of the controversial paper, is a professor. She is now an adjunct professor of special education at the University of West Georgia. According to her \u003ca href=\"https://www.westga.edu/profile.php?emp_id=94150\">professional biography\u003c/a>, her passion is in supporting special education inclusion and she has taught in an inclusive preschool classroom. Taylor emailed me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>We are always working towards supporting people’s understanding of inclusion as a human right and not as an intervention or variable in a research study. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Given that segregation is inherently flawed and unethical regardless of how students perform, it is critical to recognize our country’s systemic educational barriers for students with disabilities even within the context of inclusion (thus, preventing students with disabilities from achieving their full potential even within inclusive settings).…This published article alone perpetuates harmful rhetoric that leads to the further exclusion and mistreatment of children with disabilities despite their legally mandated right to inclusion in the general education setting.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Higher test scores aren’t the only or even the most important goal\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Chris Yarrell, an attorney at the \u003ca href=\"https://cleweb.org/about-cle/\">Center for Law and Education\u003c/a>, which advocates for low-income students, posted \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/chrisyarrell.bsky.social/post/3lg2f66bi5k2q\">his thoughts\u003c/a> on Bluesky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The article notes that Dr. Fuchs “is concentrating on academic outcomes” and acknowledges that inclusion may have “psychological or social benefits” that were [not] studied. Yet, this seems to imply that these benefits are less relevant to students’ academic success\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Social or psychological benefits—like peer interaction, belonging, and reduced isolation—aren’t incidental to learning/academic achievement. They’re foundational. A sense of inclusion and connection creates the conditions for academic engagement and success.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Opting for private school\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Beth Netherland, who says she is the mother of a child with learning struggles, \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/BethNetherland/status/1879352651579871356\">posted\u003c/a> on X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The problem w/ gen Ed & special ed is that both typically use low value practices. My son w/ ADHD & speech/ language difficulties (DevLangDis) received early & intensive literacy interventions, & he’s thriving in general Ed classes at a private Catholic school. Straight A’s.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Most families would be okay w/ some pull out services if the school actually used evidence based methods. Most of the time that’s not the case. They’re either warehousing our children in sped [special education] or warehousing them in gen Ed. It’s a travesty.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nicole Bucka says she is the mother of a child with disabilities and is a multi-tiered system of supports (\u003ca href=\"https://mtss4success.org/essential-components\">MTSS\u003c/a>) specialist, which is one approach to supporting children who are struggling in school, including those with disabilities in a general education classroom. She \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/nbucka.bsky.social/post/3lfp5l2h45s2f\">posted\u003c/a> on Bluesky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Inclusion is not my priority. My top concern? My son learning skills (like reading and life skills). I know my kid and he wouldn’t learn optimally in inclusive settings. This article is the first time I’ve seen this complexity well represented.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Poor instruction and progress for students with learning disabilities\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Monica McHale-Small is the director of education at the Learning Disabilities Association of America, which advocates for children with dyslexia and other learning struggles. She emailed me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The outcome of inclusion for students with SLD [students with learning disabilities] is frequently less than positive.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>In my advocacy work at LDA [Learning Disabilities Association] as well as during my 27 years in public schools in Pennsylvania, I cannot tell you how often I see situations where students have an IEP [individualized education programs for students who are diagnosed with a disability], spend the majority or all of their time in the general education classroom, and have made frighteningly little academic progress. Often, these children are being given A’s and B‘s on their report cards but standardized assessments indicate their reading and/or math skills have stagnated and the gap between them and their non-disabled peers grows each year. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Frustrated teachers\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A sixth grade teacher in Texas asked me not to publish her name. In an email, she told me how hard it is to give her students with disabilities the attention they need in her general education classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I do believe they are at a disservice due to the nonexistent one-on-one academic support they need in the general education classroom\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She also described how special education professionals periodically observe her classroom and tell her how to instruct the student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Unfortunately, the observer lacks the realization of the other students’ educational needs as well. I feel inadequate, but mostly disheartened when a student with disabilities is “thrown to the wolves” and there is not a classroom environment that’s beneficial for the student’s academics and social skills.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another unnamed teacher, who goes by the social media handle @yvrteacher, identified herself as a mom and an educator. She \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/yvrteacher/status/1879537552014926117\">posted\u003c/a> this on X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Almost nowhere actually does inclusion well so it’s no wonder it’s not successful. I’ve never seen a properly implemented inclusion model in 22 years of teaching. I do believe with adequate supports and people, it could work. No one will pay for that though.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>No mention of preschoolers \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Karen Nemeth is the founder of Language Castle, which is involved in early childhood dual language education. Nemeth previously was a child care and preschool agency grant and project manager, and an education specialist for the New Jersey Department of Education. She \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/karennemethlc.bsky.social/post/3lfqatpgedk2w\">posted\u003c/a> on Bluesky.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>When you see this article, please join in shouting “THIS REPORT DOES NOT MENTION PRESCHOOL” to alert any headline-only readers so they can avoid misinterpreting this for use in early childhood education. Are you with me?\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Flawed research\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Don Magnuson, a therapeutic recreation specialist in St. Paul, Minnesota, emailed me about his experience as a college student assisting in studies of including people with disabilities in parks and recreation programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I witnessed how researchers could intentionally design the study to get the results they wanted, which made it neither valid nor reliable. It was driven by a political agenda, not by good science. Sadly, this research was often used to close down adaptive programs or not allow new adaptive programs to get started, causing actual harm to people with disabilities.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>In my profession back in the late 1980s and 1990s, including people with disabilities in regular parks and recreation programs was all the rage, largely fueled by flawed research. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>It takes courage for anyone to question the dominant narrative…There is resistance, of course, because so many people have staked their entire academic reputations on inclusion and don’t have the intellectual humility to concede that they might have been wrong.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Financial constraints\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Justin Baeder, a former public school principal in Seattle who now conducts professional development for school leaders, posted a \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/eduleadership/status/1880020011487465965\">video commentary\u003c/a> on X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I’ve been saying for a while now, without this type of evidence, that I don’t think inclusion works as well as we’re being told…If you have a student who needs a quiet classroom, who needs a calm environment, who needs a room with fewer kids in it and more adults, and not quite as much going on because they get overstimulated or there are lots of reasons that a kid might need a different type of classroom. I think often when inclusion is put in the IEP [individualized education program], it’s to save money. It’s because inclusion is what’s available. It’s not because inclusion is what the kid actually needs. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A music education professor who uses the name Blue Octäve Cult on Bluesky \u003ca href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/blueoctavecult.bsky.social/post/3lfs65fcjhk23\">wrote this\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Investing in the general ed classroom will never happen because they’ve been increasing class sizes for the last 30 years. The policymakers are clearly on the side of [a] “do more with less” business model where instruction is the product rather than a process.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A future research agenda \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Nathan Jones is the commissioner of the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER), which funds studies on the instruction of students with disabilities. Jones is on leave from Boston University, where he is a professor of special education. His six-year term at the Department of Education began in 2023. After my story came out, Jones both emailed and talked to me and my colleague Meredith Kolodner, who is also reporting about special education. This is some of what he had to say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Jones’ own research before he joined the administration, he found that more time spent in general education classrooms was associated with a \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07419325241268747\">“slight” improvement in academic outcomes\u003c/a>. Also, over the past 20 years, new reading and math interventions have been created and tested for children with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>There is a body of evidence that supports intensive instruction for many students. I think he [Fuchs] is exactly right there.\u003c/em>..\u003cem>I don’t think that it’s at cross purposes to value inclusion while at the same time valuing students getting the academic support that they need. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Special education has such a history of seclusion and separation and segregation that having nuanced arguments is hard. Even to say something like “supplemental” or “pull out” implies that a student is being robbed of the opportunity to receive instruction with their same-age peers. But I think if you were to explain it to educators or explain it to parents in terms of what students were actually getting, I think you would probably find a lot of agreement for providing students [with] supports for success in the general education curriculum. I think that would have pretty wide popularity, but the semantics of it is really tricky.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones wants to fund more studies to show how to do inclusion effectively, but also how to bring the basket of new interventions to more students.* So far, these interventions have been tested on only small groups of students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>We have evidence here and there, but it’s not sufficient evidence to provide clear guidance to folks that are making decisions.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are practical concerns, too, Jones said. Where are the extra classrooms for students to receive reading interventions when they are pulled out of their regular classes? Which regular classes should students skip to receive their interventions?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jones worries most about the shortage of well-qualified teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>We have evidence from at least one state that support staff such as paraeducators have shortages even worse than our special educators. And in most states, general educators are not required to take more than a single course to support kids with disabilities.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>I get stressed out wherever we put kids. I’m not sure where the well-qualified personnel are. If you’re making an argument for inclusion, I think you also have to make an argument that the educators providing that instruction have received sufficient training to support those students. And simultaneously, if you’re making an argument that we need well-qualified special educators providing that instruction, then you have to grapple with the fact that schools don’t have them in many cases.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>A tough discussion\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Clearly, many readers are passionate about helping students with disabilities. No matter their point of view, they would probably all agree with what Ashlyn, who goes by the handle \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/swingonastar3\">@swingonastar3\u003c/a>, posted on X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>We need to have a tough discussion about inclusion. It’s time\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>*Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly characterized how NCSER supports education research. It funds studies initiated by outside researchers. \u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Contact staff writer \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/author/jill-barshay/\">\u003cem>Jill Barshay\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-readers-react-special-education-inclusion/\">\u003cem>inclusion in schools\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A prominent professor of special education is about to ignite a fierce debate over a tenet of his field, that students with disabilities should be educated as much as possible alongside their peers in general education classrooms, a strategy known as inclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a paper that reviews more than 50 years of research, Douglas Fuchs of Vanderbilt University and the American Institutes for Research along with two colleagues at both institutions, argues that the academic benefits of including students with disabilities in general education classrooms are not settled science despite the fact that numerous studies have found that children with disabilities learn more that way. Fuchs said the paper is slated to be published this spring in the Journal of Learning Disabilities and he expects it to be made public online sooner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not saying that the evidence indicates full inclusion cannot work,” said Fuchs. “We’re saying that the evidence in terms of where to place these children is extremely weak, is fundamentally flawed, and no conclusions can be drawn from the evidence.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuchs also notes that there is a growing body of high quality research on how to teach children with disabilities or who are at risk of being diagnosed with a disability. These studies are randomized control trials of interventions that require hours of intense, specialized instruction. For many, if not most students with disabilities, Fuchs argues, a separate setting, such as a separate classroom or even a separate school, might be the best way to get the instruction they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some number of kids with disabilities can and should be in general classrooms,” Fuchs said. “It’s manifestly obvious that they’re doing reasonably well. They should stay there. But for a majority, they need intensive instruction, and we know how to provide intensive instruction. The evidence is, I dare say, overwhelming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuchs’ view challenges \u003ca href=\"https://www.abtglobal.com/insights/publications/report/summary-of-the-evidence-on-inclusive-education\">hundreds of studies\u003c/a> that have consistently found that inclusive educational settings have substantial benefits for the cognitive and social development of children with disabilities. That research has been instrumental in persuading lawmakers to increase funding to help schools accommodate students with disabilities, in some cases hiring extra special education teachers for every class. Roughly \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgg/students-with-disabilities\">15 percen\u003c/a>t of U.S. public school students have been diagnosed with a disability and receive services, according to the most recent data, so this debate over special education placement affects not only the academic prospects of students with disabilities but also the cost and structure of the whole educational system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper, “Reframing the Most Important Special Education Policy Debate in Fifty Years: \u003cem>How\u003c/em> versus \u003cem>Where\u003c/em> to Educate Students with Disabilities in America’s Schools,” was co-authored by Allison Gilmour, a researcher of special education at the American Institutes for Research, and Jeanne Wanzek, a professor of special education at Vanderbilt. Fuchs provided me with a pre-publication draft and gave me permission to discuss it with other experts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The core of Fuchs’ critique is that previous researchers failed to distinguish between students with disabilities who are sent to separate special education classrooms and students with disabilities who are included in general education classrooms. They are fundamentally different. Children who are placed in separate settings for a significant part or most of the day tend to have more severe disabilities and academic struggles. It should be no surprise to anyone that higher achieving students with milder disabilities end up with higher test scores than students who initially had lower test scores and more severe disabilities. That isn’t proof that a child with a disability learns more in a general education classroom. Ideally, from a research perspective, you’d want to randomly assign students with disabilities to both types of classrooms and see where they learn more. But that’s unethical, and impractical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers call this problem “selection bias” and they have tried to overcome it with statistical techniques. For example, they have compared students with disabilities who have similar demographic characteristics, such as the same race or ethnicity, similar family income and the same type of disability. Inclusion still comes out on top. However, Fuchs points out that many of these studies have still failed to account for the two most important factors: how the student was doing academically before the disability was diagnosed and the severity of the disability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in the late 1980s, the federal government started to collect data on these two important, confounding factors – academic achievement before diagnosis and disability severity – so that policymakers could see how well students were faring under the 1975 federal law that mandates support for educating students with disabilities. Fuchs and his co-authors reviewed a \u003ca href=\"https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED341228\">1991 analysis\u003c/a> of this data, called the \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=NCEE20154014\">National Longitudinal Transition Study\u003c/a>, and noted that it initially reported that high school students with disabilities learned more when they learned alongside their general education peers. But the appendix of \u003ca href=\"https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED341228\">the report\u003c/a> disclosed that the advantage for special education inclusion disappeared when the academic gains were adjusted for prior academic achievement and measures of the students’ functional skills. Fuchs said there were no differences in outcomes between the two settings when researchers compared students who started with the same test scores and had the same disability severity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some recent studies with statistical sophistication still show that inclusion prevails. For example, in two studies of Indiana students with disabilities published in \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022466920925033\">2021\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00224669221097945\">2023\u003c/a>, researchers found that the more time that students spent in an inclusive setting, the better they did. However, Fuchs and his co-authors pointed out that more than half the students were thrown out of the 2021 study because of missing data and research design. They say the studies compared only the two extremes of students who spent 80 percent of the time or more in general education versus 80 percent of the time or more in separate classrooms, which was a very small group of students (only 75 in math and 63 in English language arts). Even with statistical adjustments for prior academic achievement, it’s hard to equate these two groups. Fuchs and his co-authors concluded that the validity of the two studies is “problematic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not the first time Fuchs has questioned the gospel that inclusion is best. In an \u003ca href=\"https://www.proquest.com/openview/268f2c637914690295517745d468e5f2/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=41842\">article published 30 years ago\u003c/a>, Fuchs criticized the wisdom of always educating children with disabilities in the general education classroom. In 2023, Fuchs published \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10442073221097713\">a study\u003c/a> showing that even states with the highest rates of special education inclusion did not have consistently improving test scores for children with disabilities. Scores declined in some states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuchs and his colleagues’ sharp critique of the strength of the evidence for inclusion is controversial, but they are not alone. In December 2022, the Campbell Collaboration, a widely respected international nonprofit organization that reviews research evidence for public policy purposes, also concluded that the benefits for inclusion were \u003ca href=\"https://www.campbellcollaboration.org/review/inclusion-children-with-special-educational-needs/\">inconsistent and inconclusive\u003c/a>. The Campbell reviewers threw out 99 percent of the 2,000 studies they found because of poor quality and research design, for reasons similar to those Fuchs describes. Only 15 studies survived. They found that math and reading scores, along with psychological, emotional and behavioral measures, were no higher for children with disabilities who learned in general education classrooms, on average, compared to children who learned in separate special education classrooms. Advocates for children with disabilities disputed the findings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lynn Newman, a researcher at SRI, a California-based research organization, has worked on multi-year studies of students with disabilities for the federal government. She said Fuchs’ paper makes some good points, but she said his argument also has some “holes” because it excludes some well-designed studies of more recent data, in which inclusion appears to be beneficial, especially among high-school students with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newman explained to me that there was very little support for students with disabilities in general education classrooms in the 1980s and 1990s. Inclusion has since improved, she said. She cited four studies (\u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0034654315583135\">one\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2165143415588047\">two\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2165143420959793\">three\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0885728809346960\">four\u003c/a>), published between 2009 and 2021, showing that students fared better with inclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I showed this research to Fuchs, who agreed that the methodology and quality were good, but he noted that these studies didn’t analyze whether students were learning more in one place than another. Instead, the studies focused on other outcomes like employment after high school. “The articles Newman identified are barking up a different tree,” he said by email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuchs is concentrating on academic outcomes. He admits there may be other psychological or social benefits to learning alongside peers in general education classes. He did not study those. But those benefits could be even more important to parents, and to lifetime success. (Fuchs also did not review the evidence of how students without disabilities are affected by peers with disabilities in their classrooms. That is a different \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1747938X17300131\">body of research\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Measuring academic outcomes for students with disabilities is difficult. Students with disabilities are more likely to fail a general education class. Grades between the two settings – special education and general education – cannot be directly compared. Test scores are often lacking, especially before and after changes in special education placements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other scholars I talked to said Fuchs lumped all disabilities together. Two specialists in children with the most severe disabilities who need extensive support showed me recent \u003ca href=\"https://meridian.allenpress.com/ajidd/article-abstract/129/5/405/502855/Impact-of-Educational-Placement-on-the-Goal?redirectedFrom=fulltext\">studies\u003c/a> that point to \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1540796920943469\">superior learning\u003c/a> when these students are included in the general classroom, even though they rarely are. However, those students represent only 1 percent of the student population with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many ways, this debate shows how science responds to changing conditions. Decades ago, there weren’t many ways to help children with disabilities. Today there is a growing body of research about the best ways to teach children, especially young elementary school children, who are having difficulties with reading and math. Some of these interventions require daily instruction away from the general education classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuchs doesn’t think his argument will lead to segregating all children with disabilities in self-contained classrooms. He envisions schools where students would be pulled out of the general education classroom on a daily basis to receive the reading and math instruction they need in a separate classroom. Some children with mild dyslexia, he said, might need only an hour a day of intensive reading instruction. Meanwhile some high-functioning children with Down syndrome might be able to remain in the regular general education class during reading time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And just as the quality of separate, special education may be evolving, so too is the quality of inclusion in a general education classroom. Schools are getting better at supporting and accommodating students with disabilities. Clearly, a good version of inclusion will outperform a bad version of a separate classroom. And a good version of intense, specialized instruction will outperform a bad version of an inclusive classroom where the general education teacher is \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/teacher-preparation-failing-students-disabilities/\">overwhelmed and lacks training\u003c/a>. Too often, students aren’t getting the support they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School leaders are in a tough spot when they have to decide whether to invest in improving the general classroom to accommodate everyone or to create and refine interventions that happen outside of the classroom. And at the moment, research can’t really tell them what works best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-special-education-inclusion-research-flawed/\">\u003cem>special education inclusion\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A prominent professor of special education is about to ignite a fierce debate over a tenet of his field, that students with disabilities should be educated as much as possible alongside their peers in general education classrooms, a strategy known as inclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a paper that reviews more than 50 years of research, Douglas Fuchs of Vanderbilt University and the American Institutes for Research along with two colleagues at both institutions, argues that the academic benefits of including students with disabilities in general education classrooms are not settled science despite the fact that numerous studies have found that children with disabilities learn more that way. Fuchs said the paper is slated to be published this spring in the Journal of Learning Disabilities and he expects it to be made public online sooner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not saying that the evidence indicates full inclusion cannot work,” said Fuchs. “We’re saying that the evidence in terms of where to place these children is extremely weak, is fundamentally flawed, and no conclusions can be drawn from the evidence.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuchs also notes that there is a growing body of high quality research on how to teach children with disabilities or who are at risk of being diagnosed with a disability. These studies are randomized control trials of interventions that require hours of intense, specialized instruction. For many, if not most students with disabilities, Fuchs argues, a separate setting, such as a separate classroom or even a separate school, might be the best way to get the instruction they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some number of kids with disabilities can and should be in general classrooms,” Fuchs said. “It’s manifestly obvious that they’re doing reasonably well. They should stay there. But for a majority, they need intensive instruction, and we know how to provide intensive instruction. The evidence is, I dare say, overwhelming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuchs’ view challenges \u003ca href=\"https://www.abtglobal.com/insights/publications/report/summary-of-the-evidence-on-inclusive-education\">hundreds of studies\u003c/a> that have consistently found that inclusive educational settings have substantial benefits for the cognitive and social development of children with disabilities. That research has been instrumental in persuading lawmakers to increase funding to help schools accommodate students with disabilities, in some cases hiring extra special education teachers for every class. Roughly \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgg/students-with-disabilities\">15 percen\u003c/a>t of U.S. public school students have been diagnosed with a disability and receive services, according to the most recent data, so this debate over special education placement affects not only the academic prospects of students with disabilities but also the cost and structure of the whole educational system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper, “Reframing the Most Important Special Education Policy Debate in Fifty Years: \u003cem>How\u003c/em> versus \u003cem>Where\u003c/em> to Educate Students with Disabilities in America’s Schools,” was co-authored by Allison Gilmour, a researcher of special education at the American Institutes for Research, and Jeanne Wanzek, a professor of special education at Vanderbilt. Fuchs provided me with a pre-publication draft and gave me permission to discuss it with other experts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The core of Fuchs’ critique is that previous researchers failed to distinguish between students with disabilities who are sent to separate special education classrooms and students with disabilities who are included in general education classrooms. They are fundamentally different. Children who are placed in separate settings for a significant part or most of the day tend to have more severe disabilities and academic struggles. It should be no surprise to anyone that higher achieving students with milder disabilities end up with higher test scores than students who initially had lower test scores and more severe disabilities. That isn’t proof that a child with a disability learns more in a general education classroom. Ideally, from a research perspective, you’d want to randomly assign students with disabilities to both types of classrooms and see where they learn more. But that’s unethical, and impractical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers call this problem “selection bias” and they have tried to overcome it with statistical techniques. For example, they have compared students with disabilities who have similar demographic characteristics, such as the same race or ethnicity, similar family income and the same type of disability. Inclusion still comes out on top. However, Fuchs points out that many of these studies have still failed to account for the two most important factors: how the student was doing academically before the disability was diagnosed and the severity of the disability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginning in the late 1980s, the federal government started to collect data on these two important, confounding factors – academic achievement before diagnosis and disability severity – so that policymakers could see how well students were faring under the 1975 federal law that mandates support for educating students with disabilities. Fuchs and his co-authors reviewed a \u003ca href=\"https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED341228\">1991 analysis\u003c/a> of this data, called the \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=NCEE20154014\">National Longitudinal Transition Study\u003c/a>, and noted that it initially reported that high school students with disabilities learned more when they learned alongside their general education peers. But the appendix of \u003ca href=\"https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED341228\">the report\u003c/a> disclosed that the advantage for special education inclusion disappeared when the academic gains were adjusted for prior academic achievement and measures of the students’ functional skills. Fuchs said there were no differences in outcomes between the two settings when researchers compared students who started with the same test scores and had the same disability severity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some recent studies with statistical sophistication still show that inclusion prevails. For example, in two studies of Indiana students with disabilities published in \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022466920925033\">2021\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00224669221097945\">2023\u003c/a>, researchers found that the more time that students spent in an inclusive setting, the better they did. However, Fuchs and his co-authors pointed out that more than half the students were thrown out of the 2021 study because of missing data and research design. They say the studies compared only the two extremes of students who spent 80 percent of the time or more in general education versus 80 percent of the time or more in separate classrooms, which was a very small group of students (only 75 in math and 63 in English language arts). Even with statistical adjustments for prior academic achievement, it’s hard to equate these two groups. Fuchs and his co-authors concluded that the validity of the two studies is “problematic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not the first time Fuchs has questioned the gospel that inclusion is best. In an \u003ca href=\"https://www.proquest.com/openview/268f2c637914690295517745d468e5f2/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=41842\">article published 30 years ago\u003c/a>, Fuchs criticized the wisdom of always educating children with disabilities in the general education classroom. In 2023, Fuchs published \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10442073221097713\">a study\u003c/a> showing that even states with the highest rates of special education inclusion did not have consistently improving test scores for children with disabilities. Scores declined in some states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuchs and his colleagues’ sharp critique of the strength of the evidence for inclusion is controversial, but they are not alone. In December 2022, the Campbell Collaboration, a widely respected international nonprofit organization that reviews research evidence for public policy purposes, also concluded that the benefits for inclusion were \u003ca href=\"https://www.campbellcollaboration.org/review/inclusion-children-with-special-educational-needs/\">inconsistent and inconclusive\u003c/a>. The Campbell reviewers threw out 99 percent of the 2,000 studies they found because of poor quality and research design, for reasons similar to those Fuchs describes. Only 15 studies survived. They found that math and reading scores, along with psychological, emotional and behavioral measures, were no higher for children with disabilities who learned in general education classrooms, on average, compared to children who learned in separate special education classrooms. Advocates for children with disabilities disputed the findings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lynn Newman, a researcher at SRI, a California-based research organization, has worked on multi-year studies of students with disabilities for the federal government. She said Fuchs’ paper makes some good points, but she said his argument also has some “holes” because it excludes some well-designed studies of more recent data, in which inclusion appears to be beneficial, especially among high-school students with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newman explained to me that there was very little support for students with disabilities in general education classrooms in the 1980s and 1990s. Inclusion has since improved, she said. She cited four studies (\u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0034654315583135\">one\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2165143415588047\">two\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2165143420959793\">three\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0885728809346960\">four\u003c/a>), published between 2009 and 2021, showing that students fared better with inclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I showed this research to Fuchs, who agreed that the methodology and quality were good, but he noted that these studies didn’t analyze whether students were learning more in one place than another. Instead, the studies focused on other outcomes like employment after high school. “The articles Newman identified are barking up a different tree,” he said by email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuchs is concentrating on academic outcomes. He admits there may be other psychological or social benefits to learning alongside peers in general education classes. He did not study those. But those benefits could be even more important to parents, and to lifetime success. (Fuchs also did not review the evidence of how students without disabilities are affected by peers with disabilities in their classrooms. That is a different \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1747938X17300131\">body of research\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Measuring academic outcomes for students with disabilities is difficult. Students with disabilities are more likely to fail a general education class. Grades between the two settings – special education and general education – cannot be directly compared. Test scores are often lacking, especially before and after changes in special education placements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other scholars I talked to said Fuchs lumped all disabilities together. Two specialists in children with the most severe disabilities who need extensive support showed me recent \u003ca href=\"https://meridian.allenpress.com/ajidd/article-abstract/129/5/405/502855/Impact-of-Educational-Placement-on-the-Goal?redirectedFrom=fulltext\">studies\u003c/a> that point to \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1540796920943469\">superior learning\u003c/a> when these students are included in the general classroom, even though they rarely are. However, those students represent only 1 percent of the student population with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many ways, this debate shows how science responds to changing conditions. Decades ago, there weren’t many ways to help children with disabilities. Today there is a growing body of research about the best ways to teach children, especially young elementary school children, who are having difficulties with reading and math. Some of these interventions require daily instruction away from the general education classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fuchs doesn’t think his argument will lead to segregating all children with disabilities in self-contained classrooms. He envisions schools where students would be pulled out of the general education classroom on a daily basis to receive the reading and math instruction they need in a separate classroom. Some children with mild dyslexia, he said, might need only an hour a day of intensive reading instruction. Meanwhile some high-functioning children with Down syndrome might be able to remain in the regular general education class during reading time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And just as the quality of separate, special education may be evolving, so too is the quality of inclusion in a general education classroom. Schools are getting better at supporting and accommodating students with disabilities. Clearly, a good version of inclusion will outperform a bad version of a separate classroom. And a good version of intense, specialized instruction will outperform a bad version of an inclusive classroom where the general education teacher is \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/teacher-preparation-failing-students-disabilities/\">overwhelmed and lacks training\u003c/a>. Too often, students aren’t getting the support they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School leaders are in a tough spot when they have to decide whether to invest in improving the general classroom to accommodate everyone or to create and refine interventions that happen outside of the classroom. And at the moment, research can’t really tell them what works best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-special-education-inclusion-research-flawed/\">\u003cem>special education inclusion\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "gaps-worsen-but-hope-persists-6-takeaways-from-a-devastating-international-math-test",
"title": "Gaps Worsen, But Hope Persists: 6 Takeaways From a Devastating International Math Test",
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"headTitle": "Gaps Worsen, But Hope Persists: 6 Takeaways From a Devastating International Math Test | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>An abysmal showing by U.S. students on a recent international math test flabbergasted typically restrained education researchers. “It looks like student achievement just fell off a cliff,” said Dan Goldhaber, an economist at the American Institutes for Research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2023 results of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.iea.nl/studies/iea/timss/timss2023\">Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)\u003c/a>, which were released earlier this month, show that the severe declines in student achievement, previously reported on the \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-several-surprises-in-gloomy-naep-report/\">2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-there-is-a-worldwide-problem-in-math-and-its-not-just-about-the-pandemic/\">2022 Program of International Student Assessment (PISA)\u003c/a>, are stubbornly enduring and possibly becoming more severe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is it time to panic? Here are my six takeaways, based on interviews with testing experts:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A “dwindling middle” reflects growing inequality\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The very top students, who tested better than 90 percent of the nation, have held steady since 2019. Down a notch, at the 75th percentile – I think of this as the top of the average range – students appeared to slide a bit. But their decline was not statistically significant, meaning that not enough students took the TIMSS test to tell if their deterioration was real or a statistical fluke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next in line, students at the 50th percentile – dead in the middle – fell by a whopping 18 points, the equivalent of losing many months of learning. From there, the deterioration worsens. Students at the 25 percentile – the bottom of the average range – fell 29 points. And the bottom 10th percentile fell by 37 points.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a dwindling middle,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which is responsible for administering TIMSS in this country. Carr said that this group of students is being pulled down to the bottom – a pattern she is seeing across different tests and different subjects since the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>\u003cstrong>U.S. 4th-grade students on the TIMSS, 1995–2023, by student percentiles \u003c/strong>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65050\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65050\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-U.S.-4th-grade-students-on-the-TIMSS-1995%E2%80%932023-by-student-percentiles-.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"595\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-U.S.-4th-grade-students-on-the-TIMSS-1995–2023-by-student-percentiles-.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-U.S.-4th-grade-students-on-the-TIMSS-1995–2023-by-student-percentiles--800x487.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-U.S.-4th-grade-students-on-the-TIMSS-1995–2023-by-student-percentiles--160x97.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-U.S.-4th-grade-students-on-the-TIMSS-1995–2023-by-student-percentiles--768x468.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Both average and below-average students slid on the 2023 international math test. Source: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 1995-2023. Retrieved from NCES.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Another way of understanding the shrinking middle is to see how few American children met basic math benchmarks. The test found that 13 percent of fourth graders could not add and subtract numbers with up to three digits, multiply and divide single-digit numbers and solve simple word problems. In 2019, the last time the test was administered, only 7 percent of fourth graders couldn’t handle these basics. In 2023, 32 percent of American fourth graders could not reach the second of four levels, called “intermediate,” which means they could not multiply three-digit numbers, add decimals or measure straight distances. In other words, a third of the fourth graders are struggling with grade-level math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>England, Germany, and Portugal all had more students hitting and surpassing these bottom two levels. (Click \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Percent-of-students-reaching-benchmarks-4th-TIMSS.pdf\">here\u003c/a> to see how many fourth graders in each country reached the four levels: low, intermediate, high and advanced.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The dwindling of the middle is something that distinguishes the United States,” Carr said. Although the dwindling middle was most pronounced in fourth grade math, Carr said she noticed a similar decline in the skills of average U.S. adults, ages 16-65, on \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp#a-first-look-at-2023-u-s-piaac-overall-results\">another 2023 international assessment\u003c/a>, also released in this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The growing bifurcation of math skills between a small cluster at the top and growing cluster at the bottom, with a hollowing out of the middle, reflects the income distribution among U.S. households. “It looks like society,” said Goldhaber, a labor economist who worries that the academic losses triggered by the pandemic will make it harder for many young Americans to earn a good living. “They predict greater inequality in the future,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The math skills of even the highest scoring eighth graders have deteriorated\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65049\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65049\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Eighth-grade-math-achievement-on-the-TIMSS-test-1995-2023-by-student-percentiles.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"589\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Eighth-grade-math-achievement-on-the-TIMSS-test-1995-2023-by-student-percentiles.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Eighth-grade-math-achievement-on-the-TIMSS-test-1995-2023-by-student-percentiles-800x482.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Eighth-grade-math-achievement-on-the-TIMSS-test-1995-2023-by-student-percentiles-160x96.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Eighth-grade-math-achievement-on-the-TIMSS-test-1995-2023-by-student-percentiles-768x463.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eighth grade math achievement on the TIMSS test, 1995-2023, by student percentiles. Source: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 1995-2023. (Retrieved from NCES.)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The math story with eighth graders is different from that of fourth graders. Achievement gaps between the bottom and the top scoring eighth graders have not widened. But the math scores of top students fell dramatically, 50 percent more than those at the bottom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not clear what’s behind the decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These eighth graders were in fifth grade when the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020. Despite tutoring and extra help at home, many students at the top 90th percentile appear not to have mastered middle school math skills as well as previous high-scoring eighth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These results show the importance of math instruction at school as children get older, and how hard it is for even affluent families to make up for missed classroom time.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The gender gap re-emerges\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Historically, American boys test better than girls in math. That gender gap disappeared in 2015 among eighth graders. But as scores plummeted, the gender gap reappeared in 2023. The gender gap never disappeared in fourth grade math, but in 2023, boys outscored girls by the widest margin ever.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>\u003cstrong>Boys once again outpace girls in eighth grade math\u003c/strong>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65046\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-65046 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Boys-once-again-outpace-girls-in-eighth-grade-math.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"441\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Boys-once-again-outpace-girls-in-eighth-grade-math.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Boys-once-again-outpace-girls-in-eighth-grade-math-800x361.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Boys-once-again-outpace-girls-in-eighth-grade-math-160x72.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Boys-once-again-outpace-girls-in-eighth-grade-math-768x347.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: National Center for Education Statistics, 2023 TIMSS\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>\u003cstrong>An historic boy-girl gap in fourth grade math\u003c/strong>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65045\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65045\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-An-historic-boy-girl-gap-in-fourth-grade-math.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"502\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-An-historic-boy-girl-gap-in-fourth-grade-math.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-An-historic-boy-girl-gap-in-fourth-grade-math-800x411.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-An-historic-boy-girl-gap-in-fourth-grade-math-160x82.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-An-historic-boy-girl-gap-in-fourth-grade-math-768x395.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: National Center for Education Statistics, 2023 TIMSS\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>‘Crazy’ patterns around the world\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>William Schmidt, a professor at Michigan State University, has studied international assessments for decades and has analyzed \u003ca href=\"https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Why-Schools-Matter%3A-A-Cross-National-Comparison-of-Schmidt/6e7898e8a750c5761e7be87d7732a36cc4cc0034\">math curriculum around the world\u003c/a>. He called the 2023 TIMSS results the “craziest” he has ever seen and said it is difficult to make sense of the mixed results. Some high-performing nations fell considerably yet remained at the top. Meanwhile, students in Turkey, which had never been a high-performing nation, suddenly rose to the upper tier. It will take time to sort out what that means. (Here are the \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/TIMSS-4th-grade-math.pdf\">international rankings for fourth grade\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/TIMSS-8th-grade-math-rankings.pdf\">eighth grade math\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students in Sweden, which kept schools open during the pandemic, posted sharply higher math scores between 2019 and 2023. Their \u003ca href=\"https://timss2023.org/results/grade-4-math-achievement-trends/\">fourth graders hit a \u003c/a>record. Still, analysts were unable to tell if shorter school closures were consistently linked to greater math gains. Sometimes, scores moved in opposite directions within the same country. For example, English \u003ca href=\"https://timss2023.org/results/grade-4-math-achievement-trends/\">fourth graders slipped\u003c/a> while the country’s \u003ca href=\"https://timss2023.org/results/grade-8-math-achievement-trends/\">eighth graders improved\u003c/a>. Covid closures were similar for both groups of students. Schmidt says it will take more time for researchers to gather this data and analyze it. (Here are the historical math scores, from 1995 to 2023, for each nation among \u003ca href=\"https://timss2023.org/results/grade-4-math-achievement-trends/\">fourth\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://timss2023.org/results/grade-8-math-achievement-trends/\">eighth\u003c/a> graders.)\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Calculating the Covid effect\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Another puzzle is how much of the decline in U.S. math scores to attribute to Covid and how much to attribute to other problems in American math education. Notably, math scores for U.S. fourth graders have been declining since 2011. Eighth graders have been posting lower math scores since 2015. They might well have continued declining between 2019 and 2023 had the pandemic never happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Reasons to hope\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It is discouraging that the United States consistently ranks far behind the top 10 nations in math. (On the 2023 TIMSS, U.S. eighth graders ranked 22nd out of 44 countries and sub-national regions.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, there are 360,000 American eighth graders in the top 10 percent who score at the most advanced of four levels. Mere average students in top-performing Singapore do just as well, but there are only 33,000 eighth graders in total in the city-state, according to Tom Loveless, an independent researcher who studies international assessments. Some of these advanced U.S. students may eventually develop the skills to cure cancer or find a cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels. Some will start companies and propel the American economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One lesson from this is the sheer size of the United States makes up for a lot,” said Loveless. “We are producing 360,000 kids every year going into high school, and they know a tremendous amount of math.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another potential bright spot is that this TIMSS test was administered in the spring of 2023, a year and a half ago. Since then, several 2024 state tests show that students are rebounding, even if only by a small amount. Scores from the spring of 2024 are up in \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2024/08/21/nyc-reads-2024-test-score-results-math-english/\">New York\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.fldoe.org/newsroom/latest-news/florida-students-demonstrate-success-in-second-year-of-first-in-the-nation-progress-monitoring-assessments.stml#:~:text=Scores%20over%20the%202023%2D2024,1%20on%20ELA%20since%202019.\">Florida\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr24/yr24rel46.asp\">California\u003c/a>. “Forty years from now, we might see these TIMSS scores as the bottom, representing the full impact of the pandemic,” said Loveless. “We might have progress from here on out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there is a rebound, we should be able to detect it on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that was administered earlier this year. Those scores are expected to be released in early 2025. I’ll be watching for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact staff writer \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/author/jill-barshay/\">\u003cem>Jill Barshay\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-2023-timss/\">\u003cem>TIMSS \u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Gaps Worsen, But Hope Persists: 6 Takeaways From a Devastating International Math Test | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>An abysmal showing by U.S. students on a recent international math test flabbergasted typically restrained education researchers. “It looks like student achievement just fell off a cliff,” said Dan Goldhaber, an economist at the American Institutes for Research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2023 results of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.iea.nl/studies/iea/timss/timss2023\">Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)\u003c/a>, which were released earlier this month, show that the severe declines in student achievement, previously reported on the \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-several-surprises-in-gloomy-naep-report/\">2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-there-is-a-worldwide-problem-in-math-and-its-not-just-about-the-pandemic/\">2022 Program of International Student Assessment (PISA)\u003c/a>, are stubbornly enduring and possibly becoming more severe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is it time to panic? Here are my six takeaways, based on interviews with testing experts:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A “dwindling middle” reflects growing inequality\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The very top students, who tested better than 90 percent of the nation, have held steady since 2019. Down a notch, at the 75th percentile – I think of this as the top of the average range – students appeared to slide a bit. But their decline was not statistically significant, meaning that not enough students took the TIMSS test to tell if their deterioration was real or a statistical fluke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next in line, students at the 50th percentile – dead in the middle – fell by a whopping 18 points, the equivalent of losing many months of learning. From there, the deterioration worsens. Students at the 25 percentile – the bottom of the average range – fell 29 points. And the bottom 10th percentile fell by 37 points.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s a dwindling middle,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which is responsible for administering TIMSS in this country. Carr said that this group of students is being pulled down to the bottom – a pattern she is seeing across different tests and different subjects since the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>\u003cstrong>U.S. 4th-grade students on the TIMSS, 1995–2023, by student percentiles \u003c/strong>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65050\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65050\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-U.S.-4th-grade-students-on-the-TIMSS-1995%E2%80%932023-by-student-percentiles-.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"595\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-U.S.-4th-grade-students-on-the-TIMSS-1995–2023-by-student-percentiles-.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-U.S.-4th-grade-students-on-the-TIMSS-1995–2023-by-student-percentiles--800x487.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-U.S.-4th-grade-students-on-the-TIMSS-1995–2023-by-student-percentiles--160x97.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-U.S.-4th-grade-students-on-the-TIMSS-1995–2023-by-student-percentiles--768x468.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Both average and below-average students slid on the 2023 international math test. Source: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 1995-2023. Retrieved from NCES.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Another way of understanding the shrinking middle is to see how few American children met basic math benchmarks. The test found that 13 percent of fourth graders could not add and subtract numbers with up to three digits, multiply and divide single-digit numbers and solve simple word problems. In 2019, the last time the test was administered, only 7 percent of fourth graders couldn’t handle these basics. In 2023, 32 percent of American fourth graders could not reach the second of four levels, called “intermediate,” which means they could not multiply three-digit numbers, add decimals or measure straight distances. In other words, a third of the fourth graders are struggling with grade-level math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>England, Germany, and Portugal all had more students hitting and surpassing these bottom two levels. (Click \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Percent-of-students-reaching-benchmarks-4th-TIMSS.pdf\">here\u003c/a> to see how many fourth graders in each country reached the four levels: low, intermediate, high and advanced.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The dwindling of the middle is something that distinguishes the United States,” Carr said. Although the dwindling middle was most pronounced in fourth grade math, Carr said she noticed a similar decline in the skills of average U.S. adults, ages 16-65, on \u003ca href=\"https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp#a-first-look-at-2023-u-s-piaac-overall-results\">another 2023 international assessment\u003c/a>, also released in this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The growing bifurcation of math skills between a small cluster at the top and growing cluster at the bottom, with a hollowing out of the middle, reflects the income distribution among U.S. households. “It looks like society,” said Goldhaber, a labor economist who worries that the academic losses triggered by the pandemic will make it harder for many young Americans to earn a good living. “They predict greater inequality in the future,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The math skills of even the highest scoring eighth graders have deteriorated\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65049\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65049\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Eighth-grade-math-achievement-on-the-TIMSS-test-1995-2023-by-student-percentiles.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"589\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Eighth-grade-math-achievement-on-the-TIMSS-test-1995-2023-by-student-percentiles.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Eighth-grade-math-achievement-on-the-TIMSS-test-1995-2023-by-student-percentiles-800x482.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Eighth-grade-math-achievement-on-the-TIMSS-test-1995-2023-by-student-percentiles-160x96.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Eighth-grade-math-achievement-on-the-TIMSS-test-1995-2023-by-student-percentiles-768x463.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eighth grade math achievement on the TIMSS test, 1995-2023, by student percentiles. Source: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 1995-2023. (Retrieved from NCES.)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The math story with eighth graders is different from that of fourth graders. Achievement gaps between the bottom and the top scoring eighth graders have not widened. But the math scores of top students fell dramatically, 50 percent more than those at the bottom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not clear what’s behind the decline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These eighth graders were in fifth grade when the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020. Despite tutoring and extra help at home, many students at the top 90th percentile appear not to have mastered middle school math skills as well as previous high-scoring eighth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These results show the importance of math instruction at school as children get older, and how hard it is for even affluent families to make up for missed classroom time.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The gender gap re-emerges\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Historically, American boys test better than girls in math. That gender gap disappeared in 2015 among eighth graders. But as scores plummeted, the gender gap reappeared in 2023. The gender gap never disappeared in fourth grade math, but in 2023, boys outscored girls by the widest margin ever.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>\u003cstrong>Boys once again outpace girls in eighth grade math\u003c/strong>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65046\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-65046 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Boys-once-again-outpace-girls-in-eighth-grade-math.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"441\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Boys-once-again-outpace-girls-in-eighth-grade-math.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Boys-once-again-outpace-girls-in-eighth-grade-math-800x361.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Boys-once-again-outpace-girls-in-eighth-grade-math-160x72.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-Boys-once-again-outpace-girls-in-eighth-grade-math-768x347.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: National Center for Education Statistics, 2023 TIMSS\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>\u003cstrong>An historic boy-girl gap in fourth grade math\u003c/strong>\u003c/h4>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_65045\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 977px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65045\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-An-historic-boy-girl-gap-in-fourth-grade-math.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"977\" height=\"502\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-An-historic-boy-girl-gap-in-fourth-grade-math.png 977w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-An-historic-boy-girl-gap-in-fourth-grade-math-800x411.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-An-historic-boy-girl-gap-in-fourth-grade-math-160x82.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/12/TIMMS-An-historic-boy-girl-gap-in-fourth-grade-math-768x395.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 977px) 100vw, 977px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: National Center for Education Statistics, 2023 TIMSS\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>‘Crazy’ patterns around the world\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>William Schmidt, a professor at Michigan State University, has studied international assessments for decades and has analyzed \u003ca href=\"https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Why-Schools-Matter%3A-A-Cross-National-Comparison-of-Schmidt/6e7898e8a750c5761e7be87d7732a36cc4cc0034\">math curriculum around the world\u003c/a>. He called the 2023 TIMSS results the “craziest” he has ever seen and said it is difficult to make sense of the mixed results. Some high-performing nations fell considerably yet remained at the top. Meanwhile, students in Turkey, which had never been a high-performing nation, suddenly rose to the upper tier. It will take time to sort out what that means. (Here are the \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/TIMSS-4th-grade-math.pdf\">international rankings for fourth grade\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/TIMSS-8th-grade-math-rankings.pdf\">eighth grade math\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students in Sweden, which kept schools open during the pandemic, posted sharply higher math scores between 2019 and 2023. Their \u003ca href=\"https://timss2023.org/results/grade-4-math-achievement-trends/\">fourth graders hit a \u003c/a>record. Still, analysts were unable to tell if shorter school closures were consistently linked to greater math gains. Sometimes, scores moved in opposite directions within the same country. For example, English \u003ca href=\"https://timss2023.org/results/grade-4-math-achievement-trends/\">fourth graders slipped\u003c/a> while the country’s \u003ca href=\"https://timss2023.org/results/grade-8-math-achievement-trends/\">eighth graders improved\u003c/a>. Covid closures were similar for both groups of students. Schmidt says it will take more time for researchers to gather this data and analyze it. (Here are the historical math scores, from 1995 to 2023, for each nation among \u003ca href=\"https://timss2023.org/results/grade-4-math-achievement-trends/\">fourth\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://timss2023.org/results/grade-8-math-achievement-trends/\">eighth\u003c/a> graders.)\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Calculating the Covid effect\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Another puzzle is how much of the decline in U.S. math scores to attribute to Covid and how much to attribute to other problems in American math education. Notably, math scores for U.S. fourth graders have been declining since 2011. Eighth graders have been posting lower math scores since 2015. They might well have continued declining between 2019 and 2023 had the pandemic never happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Reasons to hope\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It is discouraging that the United States consistently ranks far behind the top 10 nations in math. (On the 2023 TIMSS, U.S. eighth graders ranked 22nd out of 44 countries and sub-national regions.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, there are 360,000 American eighth graders in the top 10 percent who score at the most advanced of four levels. Mere average students in top-performing Singapore do just as well, but there are only 33,000 eighth graders in total in the city-state, according to Tom Loveless, an independent researcher who studies international assessments. Some of these advanced U.S. students may eventually develop the skills to cure cancer or find a cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels. Some will start companies and propel the American economy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One lesson from this is the sheer size of the United States makes up for a lot,” said Loveless. “We are producing 360,000 kids every year going into high school, and they know a tremendous amount of math.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another potential bright spot is that this TIMSS test was administered in the spring of 2023, a year and a half ago. Since then, several 2024 state tests show that students are rebounding, even if only by a small amount. Scores from the spring of 2024 are up in \u003ca href=\"https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2024/08/21/nyc-reads-2024-test-score-results-math-english/\">New York\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.fldoe.org/newsroom/latest-news/florida-students-demonstrate-success-in-second-year-of-first-in-the-nation-progress-monitoring-assessments.stml#:~:text=Scores%20over%20the%202023%2D2024,1%20on%20ELA%20since%202019.\">Florida\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr24/yr24rel46.asp\">California\u003c/a>. “Forty years from now, we might see these TIMSS scores as the bottom, representing the full impact of the pandemic,” said Loveless. “We might have progress from here on out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there is a rebound, we should be able to detect it on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that was administered earlier this year. Those scores are expected to be released in early 2025. I’ll be watching for them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Contact staff writer \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/author/jill-barshay/\">\u003cem>Jill Barshay\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-2023-timss/\">\u003cem>TIMSS \u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Little kids are looking at a lot of dots these days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The theory behind this increasingly popular practice is that an effective way to teach counting might be by … \u003cem>not\u003c/em> counting. That’s the contradiction at the heart of what education researchers call “subitizing,” from the Latin “subito” or suddenly, and it means to instantly see how many, much like the way we glance at a die and see four dots without counting, “one, two, three, four.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Danielle Robinson, district math coach in Milwaukee, says subitizing has become a more common daily ritual in her city’s pre-K classrooms over the past two years. A teacher might flash a picture of three dots on a screen at the front of the classroom. Students are asked how many dots they see without actually counting them and then talk about how they reached their conclusions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To an outsider, it almost seems absurdly anti-instructional to ask children to do math like this and indeed, there still isn’t a lot of evidence to prove how well it works. But this kind of giant flashcard activity is gaining traction across elementary schools around the country. (Side note: Subitize can be pronounced either “soob-itize” as in Subaru or “sub-itize” as in subway.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more than 25 years, prominent researchers in early childhood math education have been promoting subitizing as something that schools should be teaching to build number sense. According to their theory, subitizing complements explicit counting instruction to give meaning to the concept of quantity. Without subitizing skills, children may struggle to grasp what the numbers they are counting, or simply uttering, actually mean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Although most kids learn to subitize up to three or four by the time they go to kindergarten, there are some kids who just don’t have the opportunities, and those children are in really big trouble in kindergarten,” said Art Baroody, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who spent his career studying the best ways to teach counting, numbers and arithmetic concepts to young children. “The reason for that is subitizing involves constructing an understanding of what one is, of what two is, of what three is, of what four is, which is the conceptual basis of number sense. There’s so much that builds on that understanding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As children grow older, subitizing can get more sophisticated and useful for understanding more advanced math concepts. Imagine a cluster of seven dots like this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65006 alignnone\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"789\" height=\"643\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-1.png 789w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-1-160x130.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-1-768x626.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 789px) 100vw, 789px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most people cannot subitize this many dots, especially when they’re not arranged in a familiar pattern, but they can detect subgroups. Some might see two groups of three plus an extra dot. Others might see a group of four and a group of three. There are many possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doug Clements and Julie Sarama, a research team at the University of Denver, call this quick partitioning “\u003ca href=\"https://cpin.us/sites/default/files/fcab_resources/fcab_res_math/fcab_mat_bg/Subitizing.pdf\">conceptual subitizing\u003c/a>.” They say it helps children compose and decompose numbers, which is useful in learning addition and subtraction facts. For example, 7 + 5 can be a tricky sum to learn. But a child who can subitize may quickly see that the 7 can be split into 5 and 2. That makes it easier to put together the two 5’s to make 10 plus 2 more to arrive at 12. “That’s meaningful and you don’t forget it,” said Clements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Counting from 7, of course, is another approach. But it can be mentally taxing to keep track of five more as a child counts up from 7 to 12. Children who know how to add only through counting soon realize that they do not have the time to count when presented with a long addition worksheet. These children often resort to memorizing a string of meaningless numbers (5, 7, 12) that they soon forget. “They skipped the step of making it meaningful,” Clements said. “In first grade teachers will say, ‘He knew it last week. Now he forgot it.’ Well, he never really knew it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Subitizing seems to help with all kinds of mathematical concepts, according to its proponents. In 2014, another group of researchers described how third graders who could quickly \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096514000630\">group together sets\u003c/a> of small numbers, such as three groups of two, had a more sophisticated understanding of multiplication and could multiply faster. Some say the ability to partition a number into smaller subitizable pieces builds an understanding of the relationship between a part and a whole and aids with fractions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clements and Sarama recommend using subitizing exercises through the end of elementary school. For example, an array of 24 dots can buttress a conceptual understanding of multiplication in grades three through five.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65007 alignnone\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"775\" height=\"539\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-2.png 775w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-2-160x111.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-2-768x534.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 775px) 100vw, 775px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Subitizing is not baby stuff that you move on from,” said Clements. “You just keep developing it in parallel with all the other skills you’re developing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, sometimes it actually is baby stuff. Some researchers believe that infants as young as five or six months are subitizing small numbers, such as two and three. That belief is based on experiments in which \u003ca href=\"https://www.jstor.org/stable/1130057\">infants held their gaze longer in response to changes in quantities\u003c/a>. As children grow older, they begin to map number words to collections of objects, for example, “two socks,” and by age 2, many children can subitize up to \u003ca href=\"https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2044-835x.1995.tb00688.x\">three items\u003c/a>, and 4- and 5-year-old children might subitize as many \u003ca href=\"https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2044-835x.1995.tb00688.x\">as five items\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers theorized that fostering this innate ability might help children build number sense. A \u003ca href=\"https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ883868.pdf\">case study of two students\u003c/a> who struggled in math, published in 2009, found that subitizing was helpful. University of Illinois’s Baroody promoted the teaching of subitizing in a \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/practiceguide/18\">2013 practice guide\u003c/a> on “Teaching Math to Young Children,” for the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several studies have documented that children who have stronger subitizing abilities also tend to perform better in math. For example, a \u003ca href=\"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11858-020-01150-0\">2022 study of more than 3,600 kindergarteners\u003c/a> in one southwestern school district found that kids who were better subitizers also had much better arithmetic abilities in first grade. A \u003ca href=\"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11858-020-01150-0\">2020 study of 80 young children\u003c/a>, ages 2 to 5, found that the children who could subitize through the number four, and had been taught counting, could usually answer the question “How many?” But children who could subitize only to the number three demonstrated only a partial understanding of quantity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the strong correlation between subitizing and math ability isn’t proof that students will benefit from subitizing instruction. It’s possible that stronger subitizers come from wealthier families who play more board games. These higher income children also benefit from a range of other factors at home, from better nutrition to less stress, that could be driving their success in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The empirical evidence that it’s worthwhile to invest classroom time in subitizing is thin, at least so far. In a new, but tiny study, 14 preschoolers ages 3 to 5 were randomly assigned to two different math interventions. Those who were given more practice in subitizing performed better on a test of understanding quantity. This \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0732312324000555?via%3Dihub\">study\u003c/a>, available online, is slated to be published in the December 2024 issue of the Journal of Mathematical Behavior. More and larger studies are needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even without that evidence, many elementary school teachers have been incorporating aspects of subitizing, sometimes called “quick images,” into their classrooms for decades. But a more systematic teaching of this practice appears to be gaining popularity, based on interviews I’ve had with teachers, researchers and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, a professional organization. One motivation is a desire to address the large achievement gaps between rich and poor kids by building stronger math foundations during the earliest years. Subitizing is explicitly included in \u003ca href=\"https://www.isbe.net/documents/early_learning_standards.pdf\">Illinois’s math standards\u003c/a> for kindergarteners, while many \u003ca href=\"https://www.doe.virginia.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/16362/638036744706030000\">other states suggest subitizing\u003c/a> as an example of one way to teach numbers. Curriculum publishers are increasingly printing dot images for subitizing in their materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beth MacDonald, an associate professor of early childhood mathematics education at Illinois State University, said subitizing was a hot topic at the International Congress on Mathematical Education earlier this summer. “People are coming and saying, ‘Oh, we want to examine this,’ ” said MacDonald, who wrote her dissertation on subitizing over a decade ago and is an author of several subitizing articles and studies that I read to write this piece.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the simplicity of subitizing, experts say they sometimes see it taught incorrectly. One common mistake is to ask students to count the dots. Researchers say that undermines a child’s confidence and ability to develop mental images of sets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speed is essential. Often the dots are displayed for too long, long enough for children to count them. “That’s the biggest mistake,” said Clement’s partner Sarama, who explained to me that the brevity triggers children to visualize the image on their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarama says each dot exercise can be completed in 10 seconds for a total of three minutes a day. Memory for the quantities is built, according to researchers, through brief but repeated exposures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the Milwaukee math coach, Robinson, kids want to talk so much about all the different ways that they see the dots that it’s hard for teachers to move on to the next activity. Kids really enjoy subitizing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And many children learn to subitize at home. Researchers say that the practice doesn’t require fancy materials and parents don’t need to create dot cards. They advise parents to talk about quantities during everyday activities. When you’re folding laundry, talk about matching pairs of socks. Or at the end of lunch, ask who is going to eat the three french fries left on the plate. Sometimes, you don’t have to count them!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-subitizing/\">\u003cem>subitizing\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Little kids are looking at a lot of dots these days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The theory behind this increasingly popular practice is that an effective way to teach counting might be by … \u003cem>not\u003c/em> counting. That’s the contradiction at the heart of what education researchers call “subitizing,” from the Latin “subito” or suddenly, and it means to instantly see how many, much like the way we glance at a die and see four dots without counting, “one, two, three, four.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Danielle Robinson, district math coach in Milwaukee, says subitizing has become a more common daily ritual in her city’s pre-K classrooms over the past two years. A teacher might flash a picture of three dots on a screen at the front of the classroom. Students are asked how many dots they see without actually counting them and then talk about how they reached their conclusions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To an outsider, it almost seems absurdly anti-instructional to ask children to do math like this and indeed, there still isn’t a lot of evidence to prove how well it works. But this kind of giant flashcard activity is gaining traction across elementary schools around the country. (Side note: Subitize can be pronounced either “soob-itize” as in Subaru or “sub-itize” as in subway.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more than 25 years, prominent researchers in early childhood math education have been promoting subitizing as something that schools should be teaching to build number sense. According to their theory, subitizing complements explicit counting instruction to give meaning to the concept of quantity. Without subitizing skills, children may struggle to grasp what the numbers they are counting, or simply uttering, actually mean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Although most kids learn to subitize up to three or four by the time they go to kindergarten, there are some kids who just don’t have the opportunities, and those children are in really big trouble in kindergarten,” said Art Baroody, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who spent his career studying the best ways to teach counting, numbers and arithmetic concepts to young children. “The reason for that is subitizing involves constructing an understanding of what one is, of what two is, of what three is, of what four is, which is the conceptual basis of number sense. There’s so much that builds on that understanding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As children grow older, subitizing can get more sophisticated and useful for understanding more advanced math concepts. Imagine a cluster of seven dots like this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65006 alignnone\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"789\" height=\"643\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-1.png 789w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-1-160x130.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-1-768x626.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 789px) 100vw, 789px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most people cannot subitize this many dots, especially when they’re not arranged in a familiar pattern, but they can detect subgroups. Some might see two groups of three plus an extra dot. Others might see a group of four and a group of three. There are many possibilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doug Clements and Julie Sarama, a research team at the University of Denver, call this quick partitioning “\u003ca href=\"https://cpin.us/sites/default/files/fcab_resources/fcab_res_math/fcab_mat_bg/Subitizing.pdf\">conceptual subitizing\u003c/a>.” They say it helps children compose and decompose numbers, which is useful in learning addition and subtraction facts. For example, 7 + 5 can be a tricky sum to learn. But a child who can subitize may quickly see that the 7 can be split into 5 and 2. That makes it easier to put together the two 5’s to make 10 plus 2 more to arrive at 12. “That’s meaningful and you don’t forget it,” said Clements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Counting from 7, of course, is another approach. But it can be mentally taxing to keep track of five more as a child counts up from 7 to 12. Children who know how to add only through counting soon realize that they do not have the time to count when presented with a long addition worksheet. These children often resort to memorizing a string of meaningless numbers (5, 7, 12) that they soon forget. “They skipped the step of making it meaningful,” Clements said. “In first grade teachers will say, ‘He knew it last week. Now he forgot it.’ Well, he never really knew it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Subitizing seems to help with all kinds of mathematical concepts, according to its proponents. In 2014, another group of researchers described how third graders who could quickly \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096514000630\">group together sets\u003c/a> of small numbers, such as three groups of two, had a more sophisticated understanding of multiplication and could multiply faster. Some say the ability to partition a number into smaller subitizable pieces builds an understanding of the relationship between a part and a whole and aids with fractions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clements and Sarama recommend using subitizing exercises through the end of elementary school. For example, an array of 24 dots can buttress a conceptual understanding of multiplication in grades three through five.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65007 alignnone\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"775\" height=\"539\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-2.png 775w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-2-160x111.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2024/11/Subitizing-2-768x534.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 775px) 100vw, 775px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Subitizing is not baby stuff that you move on from,” said Clements. “You just keep developing it in parallel with all the other skills you’re developing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, sometimes it actually is baby stuff. Some researchers believe that infants as young as five or six months are subitizing small numbers, such as two and three. That belief is based on experiments in which \u003ca href=\"https://www.jstor.org/stable/1130057\">infants held their gaze longer in response to changes in quantities\u003c/a>. As children grow older, they begin to map number words to collections of objects, for example, “two socks,” and by age 2, many children can subitize up to \u003ca href=\"https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2044-835x.1995.tb00688.x\">three items\u003c/a>, and 4- and 5-year-old children might subitize as many \u003ca href=\"https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2044-835x.1995.tb00688.x\">as five items\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers theorized that fostering this innate ability might help children build number sense. A \u003ca href=\"https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ883868.pdf\">case study of two students\u003c/a> who struggled in math, published in 2009, found that subitizing was helpful. University of Illinois’s Baroody promoted the teaching of subitizing in a \u003ca href=\"https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/practiceguide/18\">2013 practice guide\u003c/a> on “Teaching Math to Young Children,” for the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several studies have documented that children who have stronger subitizing abilities also tend to perform better in math. For example, a \u003ca href=\"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11858-020-01150-0\">2022 study of more than 3,600 kindergarteners\u003c/a> in one southwestern school district found that kids who were better subitizers also had much better arithmetic abilities in first grade. A \u003ca href=\"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11858-020-01150-0\">2020 study of 80 young children\u003c/a>, ages 2 to 5, found that the children who could subitize through the number four, and had been taught counting, could usually answer the question “How many?” But children who could subitize only to the number three demonstrated only a partial understanding of quantity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the strong correlation between subitizing and math ability isn’t proof that students will benefit from subitizing instruction. It’s possible that stronger subitizers come from wealthier families who play more board games. These higher income children also benefit from a range of other factors at home, from better nutrition to less stress, that could be driving their success in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The empirical evidence that it’s worthwhile to invest classroom time in subitizing is thin, at least so far. In a new, but tiny study, 14 preschoolers ages 3 to 5 were randomly assigned to two different math interventions. Those who were given more practice in subitizing performed better on a test of understanding quantity. This \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0732312324000555?via%3Dihub\">study\u003c/a>, available online, is slated to be published in the December 2024 issue of the Journal of Mathematical Behavior. More and larger studies are needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even without that evidence, many elementary school teachers have been incorporating aspects of subitizing, sometimes called “quick images,” into their classrooms for decades. But a more systematic teaching of this practice appears to be gaining popularity, based on interviews I’ve had with teachers, researchers and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, a professional organization. One motivation is a desire to address the large achievement gaps between rich and poor kids by building stronger math foundations during the earliest years. Subitizing is explicitly included in \u003ca href=\"https://www.isbe.net/documents/early_learning_standards.pdf\">Illinois’s math standards\u003c/a> for kindergarteners, while many \u003ca href=\"https://www.doe.virginia.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/16362/638036744706030000\">other states suggest subitizing\u003c/a> as an example of one way to teach numbers. Curriculum publishers are increasingly printing dot images for subitizing in their materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beth MacDonald, an associate professor of early childhood mathematics education at Illinois State University, said subitizing was a hot topic at the International Congress on Mathematical Education earlier this summer. “People are coming and saying, ‘Oh, we want to examine this,’ ” said MacDonald, who wrote her dissertation on subitizing over a decade ago and is an author of several subitizing articles and studies that I read to write this piece.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the simplicity of subitizing, experts say they sometimes see it taught incorrectly. One common mistake is to ask students to count the dots. Researchers say that undermines a child’s confidence and ability to develop mental images of sets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speed is essential. Often the dots are displayed for too long, long enough for children to count them. “That’s the biggest mistake,” said Clement’s partner Sarama, who explained to me that the brevity triggers children to visualize the image on their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarama says each dot exercise can be completed in 10 seconds for a total of three minutes a day. Memory for the quantities is built, according to researchers, through brief but repeated exposures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the Milwaukee math coach, Robinson, kids want to talk so much about all the different ways that they see the dots that it’s hard for teachers to move on to the next activity. Kids really enjoy subitizing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And many children learn to subitize at home. Researchers say that the practice doesn’t require fancy materials and parents don’t need to create dot cards. They advise parents to talk about quantities during everyday activities. When you’re folding laundry, talk about matching pairs of socks. Or at the end of lunch, ask who is going to eat the three french fries left on the plate. Sometimes, you don’t have to count them!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-subitizing/\">\u003cem>subitizing\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was written by Jill Barshay and produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://aysps.gsu.edu/profile/jason-coupet/\">Jason Coupet\u003c/a> used to administer blue book exams before the COVID-19 pandemic, but when distance learning went into effect, the associate professor of public management policy at Georgia State University said that all exams went digital. However, after in-person classes resumed, exams remained online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Coupet started to feel the pressure of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/64014/teens-are-looking-to-ai-for-answers-about-their-personal-lives-not-just-homework-help\">generative AI\u003c/a> permeating his students’ work, so as a faculty, Coupet and his colleagues started to think about ways to adjust to these changes. That’s when Coupet decided to go \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/ProfessaJay/status/1848796049982296559\">back to the paper blue book exams\u003c/a> – which can only be completed by hand-writing your answers in pen or pencil – for the 2024-25 school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The use of generative AI and other types of cheating during remotely administered exams wasn’t the only reason for Coupet to change his exam format. When students took his exams at home on a computer or laptop, Coupet was required to put parameters on the exam that he normally wouldn’t have to for an in-class test that everyone took during the same class period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As recently as a \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html\">decade\u003c/a> ago, using tech to administer and grade exams seemed like the dream come true as a responsive, time-saving tool. But now, with AI tools and rampant \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/08/another-year-ai-college-cheating/679502/\">cheating\u003c/a>, the protection of academic and intellectual integrity are being propped up by pen and paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coupet teaches public policy, so he likes for his exam questions to reflect real world dilemmas. Answers are hard to assess when students take tests at home with access to the internet. When students typed their answers, Coupet was concerned that they spent more time worrying about spell-checking and looking up correct answers. Switching to hand written exams ensures that students are focused solely on the content of the questions and applying their own knowledge and reason to the answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The Pen is Mightier Than the Keyboard\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Research suggests that writing by hand can be more beneficial for learning compared to typing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/63759/why-writing-by-hand-beats-typing-for-thinking-and-learning\">writing by hand\u003c/a>, visual motor systems in the brain that support reading are more active, said Sophia Vinci-Booher, an assistant professor of educational neuroscience at Vanderbilt University. Vinci-Booher has also found that handwriting increases letter recognition more than typing does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Generally, when note-taking and testing modes align, a student is more likely to perform better than when the modes don’t align, said Vinci-Booher. For example, if exam answers are required to be handwritten, a student who also writes their notes by hand will be more likely to do better on the exam than if that same student were to type their answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This school year, Coupet learned that the overwhelming majority of his students had never taken a hand written exam in college. When he brought out the blue books for the first exam of the 2024-25 school year, he had to give detailed instructions about blue book standards, like where to write your name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coupet noticed an immediate difference in test results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The students who didn’t come to class often showed their lack of preparation in their exam answers, and Coupet noticed more variation in these students’ answers. Students who weren’t prepared for the exam also struggled to apply reason to their answers—an important skill to master for future policy makers, he said. Previously, these struggles were masked by use of tech and what students actually didn’t know was obscured.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, Coupet will stick with blue book exams because it fits within his pedagogical style.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Grading in Blue Book\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.smcvt.edu/directories/employee-directory/alexandra-garrett/\">Alexandra Garrett\u003c/a>, an assistant professor of history at St Michael’s College, has never known anything different. She joined the faculty at St. Michael’s College during the 2022-2023 school year, and has only taught in-person classes. All three exams in her course on early American history are done in a blue book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although Garrett sees a lot of spelling errors in written exams, she doesn’t factor grammatical inconsistencies into a student’s final score. She does expect students to give thorough and content driven exam answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While some educators might wonder about reading handwriting, Garrett said that she’s only had to ask students to read their answers out loud, due to illegible handwriting, twice in her career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Administering blue book exams doesn’t seem to be as popular of a choice these days though. According to Garrett, some more experienced professors at her university have expressed surprise when she says that she’s ditched digital exams. But persistent plagiarism and unauthorized use of ChatGPT in student essays, have deterred Garrett from digital exams, and she doesn’t see herself moving away from blue books any time soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve never not done blue books for exams and I have no incentive to change it,” said Garrett.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://aysps.gsu.edu/profile/jason-coupet/\">Jason Coupet\u003c/a> used to administer blue book exams before the COVID-19 pandemic, but when distance learning went into effect, the associate professor of public management policy at Georgia State University said that all exams went digital. However, after in-person classes resumed, exams remained online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Coupet started to feel the pressure of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/64014/teens-are-looking-to-ai-for-answers-about-their-personal-lives-not-just-homework-help\">generative AI\u003c/a> permeating his students’ work, so as a faculty, Coupet and his colleagues started to think about ways to adjust to these changes. That’s when Coupet decided to go \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/ProfessaJay/status/1848796049982296559\">back to the paper blue book exams\u003c/a> – which can only be completed by hand-writing your answers in pen or pencil – for the 2024-25 school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The use of generative AI and other types of cheating during remotely administered exams wasn’t the only reason for Coupet to change his exam format. When students took his exams at home on a computer or laptop, Coupet was required to put parameters on the exam that he normally wouldn’t have to for an in-class test that everyone took during the same class period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As recently as a \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html\">decade\u003c/a> ago, using tech to administer and grade exams seemed like the dream come true as a responsive, time-saving tool. But now, with AI tools and rampant \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/08/another-year-ai-college-cheating/679502/\">cheating\u003c/a>, the protection of academic and intellectual integrity are being propped up by pen and paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coupet teaches public policy, so he likes for his exam questions to reflect real world dilemmas. Answers are hard to assess when students take tests at home with access to the internet. When students typed their answers, Coupet was concerned that they spent more time worrying about spell-checking and looking up correct answers. Switching to hand written exams ensures that students are focused solely on the content of the questions and applying their own knowledge and reason to the answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The Pen is Mightier Than the Keyboard\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Research suggests that writing by hand can be more beneficial for learning compared to typing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"masters-of-scale": {
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},
"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"on-the-media": {
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"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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},
"politicalbreakdown": {
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
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},
"radiolab": {
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