AILSA CHANG, HOST:
A report out today shows that big losses in reading and math scores did not begin with the pandemic. Researchers found that they started more than a decade ago. NPR's Cory Turner has more on what they call a learning recession and what some states are doing about it.
CORY TURNER, BYLINE: The report, called the Education Scorecard, comes from researchers at Stanford, Harvard and Dartmouth. Let's start with that headline about the nation being stuck in a learning recession.
SEAN REARDON: Particularly in reading, test scores were going down for four to six years before the pandemic.
TURNER: Stanford researcher Sean Reardon.
REARDON: In fact, you wouldn't really know there was a pandemic effect if you just looked at the last 10 or 12 years of test scores. There's been just a steady kind of decline.
TURNER: Reardon argues this learning recession began around 2013 after a quarter-century of learning gains he calls astonishing.
REARDON: The average fourth-grader in 2013 could perform the same math skills as the average sixth-grader could in 1990.
TURNER: And that matters, Reardon says, because as bad as things are now, it means America's schools have done incredible things before and can do them again. To stop this learning recession, though, we need to know not just when it started but why. Tom Kane at Harvard says there are at least two possible explanations. One, schools stopped worrying about a tough federal law that punished them for low test scores.
TOM KANE: Under No Child Left Behind, school leaders every year had to be nervous the day that their test results were being announced.
TURNER: But Kane says around 2013, that law was essentially abandoned. So that's one theory.
KANE: The other one is the rise in social media, which happened about the same time.
TURNER: Turns out, reading and math scores also started falling as teens' social media use skyrocketed. What really caused the declines, though, it's too early to know. Now, let's jump to the present and some good news. Last year, students in most states showed improvement in math, offering fresh hope for an end to this learning recession. Reading has been a tougher slog, but there's hope there too. The few states that have improved all have something in common.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: C. Cat.
TURNER: They've doubled down on phonics and the science of reading, including Maryland.
KIMBERLY LOWERY: C-L-oud.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS AND KIMBERLY LOWERY: C-L...
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: ...Oud. Cloud.
LOWERY: You guys are super-duper what?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: Smart.
LOWERY: Kiss your brain.
TURNER: Baltimore City's schools have made big gains in reading. Last year, teacher Kimberly Lowery helped three-quarters of her kindergarteners become grade-level readers or better. Her top boss, Sonja Brookins Santelises, has been Baltimore City schools CEO for the past decade and says she came in determined to improve the district's approach to literacy.
SONJA BROOKINS SANTELISES: The first thing that it did mean was that we all learn together how young people learn to read.
TURNER: Brookins Santelises decided to move away from an approach known as whole language and toward the science of reading. So she told her literacy staff...
BROOKINS SANTELISES: There are other districts in Maryland that are doing whole language, and you are free to go there. We are not doing that in Baltimore City.
TURNER: Then during the pandemic, Baltimore students lost far less ground than kids in schools with similar levels of poverty. And by 2022...
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Laughter).
TURNER: The city's reading scores were shooting up.
LOWERY: All righty.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: (Inaudible).
LOWERY: Raymond.
TURNER: Back in Mrs. Lowery's kindergarten class, the kids have the giggles after a fun game of breaking down word sounds. Mrs. Lowery asks them one more time - you guys are super-duper what?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: Smart.
TURNER: Smart. Cory Turner, NPR News, Baltimore, Maryland.
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