The percentage of students in grades three through eight who did not meet state standards in math increased from 21% in 2019 to 37% in 2021. Those figures come from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, which was not administered in every district in 2020 because of the pandemic. The decline was worse for disadvantaged students.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath put those percentages into perspective for teachers and parents: “This means probably 800,000 or more students fell below in math than usual.” No one can accept that.
The good news, if you could call it that, is that proficiency in other subjects didn’t decline as much. The number of students with satisfactory performance in reading dropped by only 4 percentage points in 2021, 33% this year as compared with 29% in 2019.
Again, that wasn’t much of a surprise for school officials. Reading is the kind of subject where a student can make progress on his or her own. If they have the basics down, they can keep reading at home or via virtual education classes and keep their skills sharp — or even increase them.
Math isn’t like that. For many students, they need the personal instruction of a teacher in a classroom to master this subject. It doesn’t translate well to self-learning or virtual education.
Of course when the pandemic struck, most schools had no choice but to revert to online education. Some students could get by, but many lost ground. As these statistics show, the loss was particularly noticeable in subjects like math.
The challenge going forward is for parents and teachers to recognize this deficit and redouble their efforts in the new school year to get math skills back on track. That will require a special focus in classrooms this fall and additional effort from the students themselves.
Some students are taking summer school classes to regain some of the knowledge they missed out on during the last school year. Good for them. But these students and many others will need special help this fall in math classes.
As Lori Gracey, executive director of the Texas Computer Education Association, put it, “There is a significant number of students starting noticeably below grade level this year,” he said. “This is going to be an all-hands-on-deck effort to catch them up.”
She’s right, and local school districts must be prepared for this challenge. We can’t just write this past year off. The math skills that elementary students learn will prepare them for math classes in high school, and then for their use of mathematics as an adult in the world of work or their daily lives. Let’s make sure they are ready.