TUESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2021 EDUCATION CONTINUED

TUESDAY, AUGUST 24 2021 EDUCATION CONTINUED

Yesterday,  I looked at K-12 education starting a second-year within a pandemIc. Today I‘m looking at some data from Texas.

The report from the State of Texas Education Agency started this way:

AUSTIN, Texas – June 28, 2021 – Today, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) released spring 2021 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) results. The results include exams in mathematics and reading for grades 3–8, 4th & 7th-grade writing, 5th and 8th-grade science, 8th-grade social studies, and high school end-of-course (EOC) exams in Algebra I, English I, English II, Biology, and U.S. History. 

https://tea.texas.gov/about-tea/news-and-multimedia/news-releases/news-2021/tea-releases-spring-2021-staar-grades-3-8-and-end-of-course-assessment-results-outcomes-for-in-person-learners-appreciably-higher-than-for-those-who-were-remote 

Looking at Math Scores - from 2021

Subject	Grade	Approaches Grade Level (or Above)
Mathematics	3	61%
	4	58%
	5	69%
	6	66%
	7	54%
	8	60%

If you take 60% as  “passing”, grade 4 and grade 7 would be failing, and grade 8 just barely making 60%.  

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The next table gives the percentage of those meeting or exceeding grade level

STAAR/EOC Test	2019	2021
Grade 3 Mathematics	48%	30%
Grade 4 Mathematics	46%	35%
Grade 5 Mathematics	56%	43%
Grade 6 Mathematics	45%	34%
Grade 7 Mathematics	41%	25%
Grade 8 Mathematics	55%	35%

The most obvious data (to me at least) is that in EVERY GRADE LEVEL between 2019 and 2021, the percent that meets or exceeds the score expected to be at the grade level dropped.   

 Again, taking the concept of 60% as passing, in 2019 no group scored 60% BUT in 2021 no score was over 43%!!!  

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A little extra analysis.  There are about 400,000 students that take the tests every year.  But, the students are different.  In 2019 some students were third graders, but in 2021, those students were now fifth graders.

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Now the big hit: “Districts with a higher percentage of students learning virtually experienced larger learning declines in all grades and subjects. For example, districts in which 25 percent or less of students were learning virtually for most of the year saw a 9-percentage point drop in satisfactory performance in mathematics from 2019 to 2021 as compared to districts in which 75 percent or more of students were learning virtually, which saw a drop of 32 percentage points.

Let’s analyze this.  In school districts in Texas - where 75% or more students were learning online (aka - virtually) - the scores dropped 32% percentage points.  Reading between the lines - school districts with more online students scored SIGNIFICANTLY LESS on these standardized tests.    What does this imply?  That K-12 students doing learning online were NOT learning as well as students in the classroom.  

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Yesterday I wrote about “learning is intrinsic”.  “Intrinsic learners are motivated by what is inherently interesting to them and will seek extension and application of that learning beyond teacher expectations. They engage learning through curiosity and challenge — so long as they find it meaningful.”  Can we make learning math meaningful - through curiosity and appropriate challenges?   

More on that tomorrow!!!

LOVE WINS!!!

Karen