via thefederalist:
For all its obsession with “equity,” the Biden administration sure has the wrong results to show for it. In fact, the first national results showing test scores before and after covid lockdowns shows how the most vulnerable kids got hit hardest by learning loss.
The results, which compared outcomes on tests taken by nine-year-olds this past spring with those taken in early 2020 (i.e., right before hysteria shut down schools), confirmed wider learning gaps between the proverbial haves and have-nots.
Across-the-Board Declines
Overall, the test showed a five-point decline in reading scores—the largest since 1990—and an even larger, seven-point drop in math, the first one recorded in the test’s 50-year history. Those results illustrate the broad-based damage lockdowns inflicted on all student learning progress.
But dig into the details further, and a troubling pattern emerges. While most students suffered learning loss, those in greatest danger of falling through the cracks suffered most.
- While reading scores among those in the top 10 percent dropped by a modest two points, the scores of those in the bottom 10 percent dropped by 10 points, or five times as much as their higher-achieving peers.
- Math scores showed a similar disparity: Those at the top saw scores decline by three points overall, while those at the bottom saw scores decline by 12 points.
- While white students’ math scores declined by five points, Hispanic test scores declined by eight points, and African American scores declined by 13 points—a decline more than twice that of white students, and one that exacerbated existing achievement gaps.
- In both math and reading, children in lower-income households (eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches) suffered greater testing declines than their more affluent counterparts.