Westneat: New test scores show schools aren’t over COVID

More worrisome, the 2024 results are unchanged from 2023 — suggesting the learning losses might be on the way to becoming “baked in.”

“It seems like you run into two views about learning loss,” said Andrew Rotherham, an education nonprofit leader who writes a national school policy blog called Eduwonk. “One is the idea that it’s mostly cooked up by politicians, designed to make schools look bad. The second, said more quietly, is that the learning loss is so substantial it’s sort of a lost cause to try to address it. These are both wrong.”

Both views add to cynicism, while the research suggests that learning losses are both real and fixable. University of Washington education researcher Dan Goldhaber estimated in a study this summer that federal spending on extra tutoring, summer school and other catch-up efforts has helped. By the end of 2023, schools in 30 states, including Washington, had dug about one-third of the way out of their pandemic holes.

This is one of those issues where we could probably do something about it if we had the political will — or the attention spans. But we are not doing it. The pandemic is old news.

Wealthy school districts that were already doing well on standardized tests have almost built their way back up to the 2019 baseline. And for all the financial problems in the Seattle school district, its schools fit into this same category of “recovering OK.” Reading and math scores in Seattle are both up quite a bit from the 2021 nadir and remain about six points off from pre-pandemic highs.

Time to change course

Standardized test scores are hardly the only thing that matters, as many educators point out. But they’re a rough gauge for how we’re doing. And what they’re saying right now is that not only are we not back but that the achievement gaps based around income, race and class have widened.

It’s time to change course or these academic losses could become permanent. More energetic — and yes, costly — interventions, with tutoring, after-school help and a focus on academics, are clearly needed.

Rotherham said talk of helping students recover often ends with people wanting to “re-litigate pandemic-era decisions.” That’s understandable, but unfortunate, because regardless of what happened or why, none of it was the kids’ fault. They’re the ones still being shortchanged.

There’s no local or statewide issue more important than this one. But I don’t hear much talk about it on the campaign trail. Not at the presidential or congressional levels. Or in local races for the Legislature or governor.

How to get education back on its feet was barely mentioned at either debate Tuesday, for president or for Washington governor.

Everybody’s done with the pandemic. But in pernicious ways, it’s not done with us.