What to know about Pa. and N.J. test scores from the ‘nation’s report card’

The 2022 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams were released Monday, revealing that both Pennsylvania and New Jersey students saw declines in math and reading, often at steeper rates than the national average.

The exams, which were given to about 446,600 fourth- and eighth-grade students across the country between January and March, are normally given every two years. However, the test scheduled for 2021 was delayed due to the pandemic. U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona pointed to the impact of the pandemic on students’ learning and said the results were “not acceptable.”

» READ MORE: Philly schools rank near the bottom of 26 other big-city districts in national assessment

“Today’s results show that children who were already furthest from opportunity before March 2020 and who were most impacted by COVID need the greatest support now to make up for lost ground in reading and math,” Cardona said.

Here are the takeaways from the NAEP exam results, which also includes the Trial Urban District Assessment, an exam given in 26 large city school districts.

Across the board, the nation saw its largest drops between testing periods on record since the exam was first administered in 1969.

Nationwide, math scores fell an average of five points for fourth-graders and eight points for eighth-graders since 2019. No state or large urban school district saw an improvement in math scores.

» READ MORE: Pa. and N.J. reading and math scores dipped during the pandemic as U.S. saw ‘troubling’ decline

Reading scores fell an average of three points in both grades since 2019.

For fourth-graders, Pennsylvania math scores declined by six points, slightly more than the national average, while New Jersey dropped seven points on average. Delaware had the biggest decrease in the country, dropping 14 points.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey both ranked among the biggest declines in eighth-grade math scores. Only three states had a larger decrease. In both states, math scores dropped 11 points between 2019 and 2022. This put Pennsylvania in line with the national average after more than two decades of consistently performing better than the rest of the country.

In fourth-grade reading, Pennsylvania and New Jersey public school students saw scores decline four points on average in 2022 compared to 2019. That’s slightly below the national average of a three-point drop.

Eighth-grade scores in Pennsylvania dropped five points, greater than the national three-point average drop, while New Jersey held steady with a slight decline of 1 point.

Philadelphia students’ achievement ranked near the bottom of 26 large city school districts nationally, according to TUDA results. The exam tested fourth- and eighth-graders on reading and math skills at 5,190 public schools.

Like most other districts that volunteered to take the assessment, Philly’s scores dropped since it was last administered in 2019, particularly in fourth grade math, but the district held the same relative position nationally as it did then.

This year, Philadelphia ranked fifth from the bottom in fourth-grade math and reading, sixth-worst in eighth grade math, and seventh-worst in eighth grade reading.

In addition to the test scores, the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test, also collected information about how the pandemic and virtual learning affected students.

“Across both subjects and grades, higher percentages of higher-performing students (students performing at or above the 75th percentile) had access to key educational resources than lower-performing students (students performing below the 25th percentile) during remote learning in the 2020-21 school year,” the center, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education, wrote in a statement.

The “key education resources,” the center continued, included: access to a desktop computer, laptop, or tablet all the time; a quiet place to work at least some of the time; their teacher available to help with schoolwork at least once or twice a week; and for eighth-graders, real-time video lessons with their teacher daily or almost daily.