The pandemic exacerbated a reading crisis that began before schools shifted to remote learning, said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. Kids now don’t have the joy for reading they once did and teachers have changed the way they teach writing in the digital age, she said.
Adeola Whitney, CEO of a national nonprofit which works to improve equitable access to literacy education called Reading Partners, said it’s “alarming” that more students are scoring at low reading levels.
‘Reading is a civil right’
“Reading is a civil right that should be afforded to every student in the US. Our children deserve nothing less,” Whitney wrote in an email.
Brownie, from TNTP, said she’s especially concerned about low-scoring kids who live in poverty – and are at risk of staying in poverty because they aren’t skilled in reading.
“Kids that are behind don’t have to remain behind, but we have to focus on identifying solutions for kids that need those solutions and implement them,” Brownie said.
Temporary COVID-relief funding for education is gone
The Biden administration granted schools $189.5 billion through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) under the American Rescue Plan Act. The funding – given to school leaders to use to accelerate student learning recovery expired in September, yet kids’ haven’t caught up as planned.
Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, called the new test results a “national disgrace.”
“Despite an unprecedented $190 billion in federal investment meant to accelerate learning recovery, too many states have nothing to show for it except worsening outcomes,” Rodrigues wrote in an email Wednesday. “It’s time to stop pretending that ‘business as usual’ is acceptable—because these results are a disaster.”
Rodrigues called on Congress to investigate how schools spent the COVID-relief money and on the Trump administration to develop a “national strategy to ensure states are delivering on their responsibility to provide every child with a high-quality education,” which she said could include state-mandated high-dosage tutoring, extended learning time and high quality learning materials.
Lindsay Dworkin, senior vice president of policy and government affairs at the education assessment company NWEA, echoed Rodrigues’s call for urgency given the recent expiration of the temporary funding.
“With the federal emergency funds now used up, it’s more important than ever that policy and education leaders focus ever-scarcer resources on evidence-based strategies like combatting chronic absenteeism, scaling high-dosage tutoring, and expanding instructional time through extended school days and summer programming,” Dworkin wrote in an email.
‘If students aren’t in school, they can’t learn’
Student chronic absenteeism rates grew from 15% to 26% between 2018 to 2023 due to pandemic-related setbacks, according to an analysis from the American Enterprise Institute. Chronic absenteeism refers to when a student misses 10% or more of the school year.
The new federal data released Wednesday shows that student absenteeism remains a problem for America’s schools, and low-performing students are more likely to miss school than other kids.
“Absenteeism, which rose over the pandemic period, has declined since the 2022 assessment, but not to pre-pandemic levels,” reads a news release from the National Center for Education Statistics.
“We should care because if students aren’t in school, then they can’t learn,” Carr said.
