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Baltimore City students showed significant gains, though scores remain low
Maryland public schools remain stubbornly middle-of-the-pack on a national test, even as achievement inches upward.
The state’s fourth graders performed better than two years ago on reading and math, according to scores released Wednesday by the National Assessment of Educational Progress,a test required by Congress to be given every two years to a random sample of students in every state. There were also some hopeful signs in Baltimore, which saw significant gains in fourth grade math.
Maryland’s national ranking on the test rose in fourth grade reading from 40th to 20th, a highlight of the otherwise modest changes in the rankings, according to state school board president Josh Michael, who is also executive director of the Sherman Family Foundation, a financial supporter of The Banner.
“Where we have focused the most, we have seen the most progress in state rankings,” he said, adding that elementary students are making greater gains than eighth graders. “The investments in public education through the Blueprint are beginning to pay off.”
Despite that progress, the state’s scores mirror national trends showing student achievement declining in the past decade, wiping away the educational gains that were made in the early 2000s. The declines began in about 2015 and 2017, long before the pandemic.
Across the nation, “the news is not good,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the test, called the Nation’s Report Card. “We’re not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground our students lost during the pandemic, and where we are seeing signs of recovery, they’re mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performing students.
The most discouraging news for Maryland came in the state’s eighth grade scores. Only a quarter of the state’s eighth graders can pass the math test, and Maryland’s scores were lower than 27 other states.
In fourth grade, on the other hand, the state saw improvement. Thirty-seven percent passed the math test, up six percentage points. Maryland officials on Tuesday unveiled a plan to overhaul how the subject is taught in hopes of boosting achievement.
Hidden in the data, Carr said, is that the lowest-performing students in the country appear to be losing ground in reading. That does not appear to be the case in Maryland where the percentage of lowest-performing students remains constant.
The reasons for the stagnation are unclear, but Carr noted that surveys of students taken at the time of the tests show that they are not spending as much time reading for pleasure, that more reading is migrating to screens rather than paper, and that the lowest-performing students are those who are missing the most school. Her advice to parents: Send your children to school.
During the pandemic, chronic absences increased dramatically, although those numbers have been coming back to more normal levels, particularly in Baltimore.
City students nearly matched the statewide gains. Baltimore fourth graders’ scores rose by five percentage points to 12%, though the math scores are still some of the lowest in the country. City students performed better in eighth grade math than those in Detroit and about the same as those in Cleveland, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, but behind dozens of other cities.
City schools officials said their investments in improving the curriculum and teaching materials have played a role in increasing scores, but so has training for teachers, and the addition of school-based coaches for math teachers. The city also held evenings when families could learn how to teach math to their children.
The city’s scores showed particularly large increases for economically disadvantaged students, who increased their fourth grade math scores by 10 percentage points, and African American students, who increased scores by 8 percentage points.
Maryland embarked on a goal of turning around scores on the national test as it launched its major investment in education spending several years ago. The state is expected to spend about $4 billion more per year on education by 2029. State education leaders said they wanted to return the state to being known as having the best public schools in the nation.
The scores released Wednesday show only modest increases in math.
About the Education Hub
This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.