Tag: card

  • A dismal report card in math and reading

    A dismal report card in math and reading

    The kids are not bouncing back. 

    The results of a major national test released Wednesday showed that in 2024, reading and math skills of fourth and eighth grade students were still significantly below those of students in 2019, the last administration of the test before the pandemic. In reading, students slid below the devastatingly low achievement levels of 2022, which many educators had hoped would be a nadir. 

    The test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), is often called the nation’s report card. Administered by the federal government, it tracks student performance in fourth and eighth grades and serves as a national yardstick of achievement. Scores for the nation’s lowest-performing students were worse in both reading and math than those of students two years ago. The only bright spot was progress by higher-achieving children in math. 

    The NAEP report offers no explanation for why students are faltering, and the results were especially disappointing after the federal government gave schools $190 billion to aid in pandemic recovery. 

    “These 2024 results clearly show that students are not where they need to be or where we want them to be,” said Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, in a briefing with journalists. 

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    More than 450,000 fourth and eighth graders, selected to be representative of the U.S. population, took the biennial reading and math tests between January and March of 2024. 

    Depressed student achievement was pervasive across the country, regardless of state policies or instructional mandates. Student performance in every state remained below what it was in 2019 on at least one of the four reading or math tests. In addition to state and national results, the NAEP report also lists the academic performance for 26 large cities that volunteer for extra testing.

    An ever-widening gap

    The results also highlighted the sharp divergence between higher- and lower- achieving students. The modest progress in fourth grade math was entirely driven by high-achieving students. And the deterioration in both fourth and eighth grade reading was driven by declines among low-achieving students. 

    “Certainly the most striking thing in the results is the increase in inequality,” said Martin West, a professor of education at Harvard University and vice chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the NAEP test. “That’s a big deal. It’s something that we hadn’t paid a lot of attention to traditionally.”

    The starkest example of growing inequality is in eighth grade math, where the achievement gap grew to the largest in the history of the test.

    Source: NAEP 2024

    The chart above shows that the math scores of all eighth graders fell between 2019 and 2022. Afterward, high-achieving students in the top 10 percent and 25 percent of the nation (labeled as the 90th and 75th percentiles above) began to improve, recovering about a quarter of the setbacks for high achievers during the pandemic. That’s still far behind high-performing eighth graders in 2019, but at least it’s a positive trend. 

    The more disturbing result is the continuing deterioration of scores by low-performing students in the bottom 10 percent and 25 percent. The huge pandemic learning losses for students in the bottom 10 percent grew 70 percent larger between 2022 and 2024. Learning losses for students in the bottom 25 percent grew 25 percent larger.

    “The rich get richer and the poor are getting shafted,” said Scott Marion, who serves on the NAEP’s governing board and is the executive director of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, a nonprofit consultancy. “It’s almost criminal.”

    More than two-thirds of students in the bottom 25 percent are economically disadvantaged. A quarter of these low performers are white and another quarter are Black. More than 40 percent are Hispanic. A third of these students have a disability and a quarter are classified as English learners. 

    By contrast, fewer than a quarter of the students in the top 25 percent are economically disadvantaged. They are disproportionately white (61 percent) and Asian American (14 percent). Only 5 percent are Black and 15 percent are Hispanic. Three percent or fewer of students at the top have a disability or are classified as English learners.  

    Related: Six puzzling questions from the disastrous [2022] NAEP results

    Although average math scores among all eighth grade students were unchanged between 2022 and 2024, that average masks the improvements at the top and the deterioration at the bottom. They offset each other. 

    The NAEP test does not track individual students. The eighth graders who took the exam in 2024 were a different group of students than the eighth graders who took the exam in 2022 and who are now older. Individual students have certainly learned new skills since 2019. When NAEP scores drop, it’s not that students have regressed and cannot do things they used to be able to do. It means that they’re learning less each year. Kids today aren’t able to read or solve math problems as well as kids their same age in the past.

    Students who were in eighth grade in early 2024, when this exam was administered, were in fourth grade when the pandemic first shuttered schools in March 2020. Their fifth grade year, when students should have learned how to add fractions and round decimals, was profoundly disrupted. School days began returning to normal during their sixth and seventh grade years. 

    Harvard’s West explained that it was incorrect to assume that children could bounce back academically. That would require students to learn more in a year than they historically have, even during the best of times.

    “There’s nothing in the science of learning and development that would lead us to expect students to learn at a faster rate after they’ve experienced disruption and setbacks,” West said. “Absent a massive effort society-wide to address the challenge, and I just haven’t seen an effort on the scale that I think would be needed, we shouldn’t expect more positive results.”

    Learning loss is like a retirement savings shortfall

    Learning isn’t like physical exercise, West said. When our conditioning deteriorates after an injury, the first workouts might be a grind but we can get back to our pre-injury fitness level relatively quickly. 

    “The better metaphor is saving for retirement,” said West. “If you miss a deposit into your account because of a short-term emergency, you have to find a way to make up that shortfall, and you have to make it up with interest.”

    What we may be seeing now are the enduring consequences of gaps in basic skills. As the gaps accumulate, it becomes harder and harder for students to keep up with grade-level content. 

    Another factor weighing down student achievement is rampant absenteeism. In survey questions that accompany the test, students reported attending school slightly more often than they had in 2022, but still far below their 2019 attendance rates. Eleven percent of eighth graders said that they had missed five or more school days in the past month, down from 16 percent in 2022, but still far more than the 7 percent of students who missed that much school in 2019. 

    “We also see that lower-performing readers aren’t coming to school,” said NCES Commissioner Carr. “There’s a strong relationship between absenteeism and performance in these data that we’re looking at today.”

    Eighth graders by the number of days they said they were absent from school in the previous month 

    Source: NAEP 2024

    Fourth grade math results were more hopeful. Top-performing children fully recovered back to 2019 achievement levels and can do math about as well as their previous peers. However, lower-performing children in the bottom 10 percent and 25 percent did not rebound at all. Their scores were unchanged between 2022 and 2024. These students were in kindergarten when the pandemic first hit in 2020 and missed basic instruction in counting and arithmetic.

    Reading scores showed a similar divergence between high- and low- achievers.

    Source: NAEP 2024

    This chart above shows that the highest-performing eighth graders failed to catch up to what high-achieving eighth graders used to be able to do on reading comprehension tests. But it’s not a giant difference. What’s startling is the steep decline in reading scores for low-achieving students. The pandemic drops have now doubled in size. Reading comprehension is much, much worse for many middle schoolers. 

    It’s difficult to say how much of this deterioration is pandemic related. Reading comprehension scores for middle schoolers had been declining for a decade since 2013. Separate surveys show that students are reading less for pleasure, and many educators speculate that cellphone use has replaced reading time.

    Related: Why reading comprehension is deteriorating

    The biggest surprise was fourth grade reading. Over the past decade, a majority of states have passed new “science of reading” laws or implemented policies that emphasize phonics in classrooms. There have been reports of improved reading performance in Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee and elsewhere. But scores for most fourth graders, from the highest to the lowest achievers, have deteriorated since 2022. 

    One possibility, said Harvard’s West, is that it’s “premature” to see the benefits of improved instruction, which could take years.  Another possibility, according to assessment expert Marion, is that being able to read words is important, but it’s not enough to do well on the NAEP, which is a test of comprehension. More elementary school students may be better at decoding words, but they have to make sense of those words to do well on the NAEP. 

    Carr cited the example of Louisiana as proof that it is possible to turn things around. The state exceeded its 2019 achievement levels in fourth grade reading. “They did focus heavily on the science of reading but they didn’t start yesterday,” said Carr. “I wouldn’t say that hope is lost.”

    More students fall below the lowest “basic” level 

    The results show that many more children lack even the most basic skills. In math, 24 percent of fourth graders and 39 percent of eighth graders cannot reach the lowest of three achievement levels, called “basic.” (The others are “proficient” and “advanced.”) These are fourth graders who cannot locate whole numbers on a number line or eighth graders who cannot understand scientific notation. 

    The share of students reading below basic was the highest it’s ever been for eighth graders, and the highest in 20 years for fourth graders. Forty percent of fourth graders cannot put events from a story into sequential order, and one third of eighth graders cannot determine the meaning of a word in the context of a reading passage. 

    “To me, this is the most pressing challenge facing American education,” said West.

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595 or [email protected].

    This story about the 2024 NAEP test was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for  Hechinger newsletters.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Audit sheds light on state-issued credit card misuse in the Connecticut college system

    Audit sheds light on state-issued credit card misuse in the Connecticut college system

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    Dive Brief:

    • A state audit of employee spending practices at the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system found several financial transactions that broke university policies or lacked adequate documentation. 
    • Comptroller Sean Scanlon detailed over $19,000 in spending on food by system Chancellor Terrence Cheng in fiscal years 2022 through 2024, by far the majority of spending on his institutional credit card. Violations included missing receipts, missing guest lists and purchases of restricted items like alcohol.
    • Scanlon’s probe came at Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont’s request after CT Insider reported Cheng spent lavishly on meals with a state-funded credit card over the past few years.

    Dive Insight:

    The report from CT Insider alleged that Cheng had spent as much as $1,114 at restaurants in a week, and paid for private chauffeurs despite having access to a state-provided car at the time. Once, he spent nearly $500 for the service, the outlet reported.

    Scanlon’s office concluded that “while not technically violating state or university policy, we found that, in the absence of sound, comprehensive policies, the Chancellor utilized poor [judgment] when making P-Card purchases that were especially troubling given the financial stress on the CSCU system.”

    The audit zeroed in on spending on food and transportation by the chancellor. Meals designated as business meetings accounted for 70% of the spending on the official’s card, and some transactions exceeded the $50 meal limit for system employees, the audit found. It also found 18 food purchases with tips deemed excessive — above 22% — which the report noted “is not a policy violation but a questionable use of university funds.” 

    Of the chancellor’s food-related transactions reviewed by the comptroller’s office, 43% had either no itemized receipts or were missing receipts entirely. 

    Among other violations were 30 instances where Cheng paid sales tax. That’s a violation of policy because institutional credit cards — also known as P-cards — are exempt from sales tax but must go through a process with vendors to credit those taxes.

    However, the comptroller found that Cheng did not technically violate policy because as chancellor he can “override the policy at his own discretion.”

    As for chauffeur use, the report noted three times when Cheng — who lives in New York state — paid for a private car service with his P-card, including two trips even more expensive than the one reported by CT Insider. Scanlon determined that these services did not represent violations but said that they “are of note as the Chancellor was provided with a state vehicle for their use.”

    In an emailed statement Thursday, Cheng said that he appreciated the audit’s thoroughness and that the system is “committed to implementing stronger controls, policies, and comprehensive training.”

    The system review also found issues with P-card use by other leaders, including the interim president of Southern Connecticut State University, Dwayne Smith. The audit found that Smith’s P-card “shows a wide variety of infractions spanning almost every category of restricted purchasing and failure to follow many of the policy requirements for documentation and reporting of transactions.”

    Specifically, the comptroller’s office faulted Smith for failing to keep receipts, as well as purchasing tickets to an outside football game without stating its business purpose, among other issues. 

    In an emailed statement, Smith thanked the comptroller for his analysis and recommendations, adding that many of his office’s P-card transactions relate to his community engagement activities. 

    “These meetings have yielded significant support for our scholarship programs, internships, mentoring, and ultimately, enhanced job opportunities for our graduates,” Smith said.

    Scanlon’s audit found many other issues across the Connecticut college system’s staff. His office’s report lists 10 recommended changes the system should make, including reinstating internal audits, establishing a central policy for P-card use, creating accountability measures for card misuse and establishing a policy for vehicle use. 

    Unfortunately, this audit revealed troubling gaps in oversight and questionable spending practices,” Scanlon said in a Wednesday statement. “Our recommendations provide a clear path forward with more comprehensive policies, consistent enforcement, and greater overall accountability.”

    In his statement, Cheng said the recommendations would “support the goal of accountability and transparency across the system.”

    He added, “The system has begun to take steps in this direction and over the next 100 days, I’ve instructed my team to implement recommendations to improve compliance and reporting.”

    The system’s governing board this fall moved to increase oversight of spending in its central office. As part of that process, the system recently hired a new chief compliance officer and legal counsel.

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