GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The National Assessment of Educational Progress released the nation’s report card Wednesday morning, which revealed that scores in the subjects of U.S. history and civics dropped among eighth graders.
The NAEP, a branch of the Department of Education, stated that 16,000 eighth graders nationwide participated in the 2022 Civics and U.S. History Assessment. The group was split evenly into two groups, and both showed a decline in scores since the assessment was last taken in 2018. However, the scores overall were similar to what they were over 20 years ago.
Dr. Curtis Lewis said there’s nothing to panic about.
“Let’s pause, you know,” Dr. Lewis said during a Zoom interview with FOX 17 on Wednesday afternoon. “The building is not caving in because of the pandemic”
Specifically, the results show that for civics, the scores dropped by a few points from 2018, from 153 then to 150 today, on a scale from 0-300. For history, the average score dropped five points since 2018 and nine points since 2014, on a scale from 0-500.
Dr. Lewis is a professor in teacher education at Michigan State University, and CEO and founder of the Black Male Educators Alliance. He said that he believes the drop in numbers stems from researchers' assumptions that students suffered learning loss since COVID broke out in March 2020.
“The anticipation due to this sort of drastic shift and how we do schools during the pandemic like we went strictly like one day we were in class, pencil, paper, talking to teachers in person, to we’re going online,” Dr. Lewis said. “There were just assumptions made because we have a misconception that learning only takes place in those walls, right, in these school spaces.”
However, Dr. Lewis argued that the students' loss of learning stems from issues that emerged years ago, prior to the pandemic, like the teacher shortage, the lack of counselors to help with social and emotional needs and the attack on lesson plans and curriculums.
“We need to look at what was happening before the pandemic right, just as much as we’re looking at what happened after the pandemic to begin to think about what do we need to do differently. How do we engage our students and our families differently?” he said.
The NAEP assessment is taken once every four years. The 2022 assessment also revealed that scores declined for males and females, and for all lower-performing students.
It also stated that 49% of 8th graders took a class solely focused on civics and that 29 percent had instructors who only taught the subject.
For U.S. history, 68% had a class that focused on the subject and 55 percent had instructors who only taught it.
Despite the slight drop in scores though, he said they aren’t alarming.
“I think it’s more than just the pandemic that causes that shift,” Dr. Lewis said. “I think it’s a downward spiral, a downward trend that we should be concerned about, but it’s not just due to the pandemic.”
