Yesterday New Jersey residents learned, according to last spring’s annual state assessments, 52% of public school students can read at grade-level and 40% of students can do math at grade-level. This, overall, is slightly up from last year but still below pre-pandemic levels. Yet it is a big world out there and it helps to have some context.

Coincidentally, the same day the NJ Department of Education released 2024 spring test scores, results were published for an international test called the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In addition, Matthew Chingos of the Urban Institute published a report that looks at state-by-state performance on the gold-standard “Nation’s Report Card” (NAEP) and adjusts the outcomes by each state’s socio-economic demographics.

So let’s have some context.

On the TIMSS, says the New York Times,  in 2023 “American fourth graders have declined 18 points in math, while eighth graders have declined 27 points.” The Wall Street Journal calculates “U.S. rankings slid comparatively on some measures, falling to 24 out of 45 education systems in eighth-grade math and 15 out of 63 in fourth-grade science.”

But that is global pandemic learning loss, right? No, “in 16 other countries, fourth graders performed better in math in 2023 than in 2019. Also, U.S. student scores started trending downward in 2015.

“I would call these declines sharp, steep,” Peggy Carr, commissioner of a statistical agency at the U.S. Department of Education, said in a call with reporters about the test data. The pandemic drops deepen slides that had already started, she said. “Something that we should be concerned about is that this isn’t just the impact of the pandemic.”

Others point out that the U.S. doesn’t have national standards in science and that math standards here are lower than in higher-performing countries like Singapore, Japan, and England. 

Thomas Dee of Stanford told The 74,

“To see nearly three decades of math achievement growth evaporate over the comparatively short time since the pandemic is incredibly sobering. This evidence that we are falling behind other nations over this period further underscores that the U.S. is failing to meet the challenges of academic recovery.”

Chingos’ report for the Urban Institute takes 2022 NAEP scores (NAEP is given in 4th and eighth grade in reading and math to representative samples of students every two years—2024 results are due early next month) and adjusts them based on each state’s socio-economic status. It is one thing for Gov. Phil Murphy to claim New Jersey has one of the best school systems and another to factor in our status as the fifth-wealthiest state in the country. 

Indeed, when comparisons are not adjusted for demographics, NJ ranks in the top three states for student achievement in reading and math. But when SES is factored in, we’re 14th. The top five scorers are Massachusetts, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas.