BOISE, Idaho — How is Idaho public education doing as we move out of the COVID pandemic? Big picture wise, there are new insights on math and reading levels for Idaho fourth and eighth graders as a part of the ‘Nation’s Report Card.’
“It's the same test all the way across the board. So, it's a really good metric so that we can compare state to state, the state and also the national average,” Idaho’s Coordinator for the National Assessment for Education Progress, Paul Kleinert said.
The National Assessment for Education Progress, or NAEP, tested fourth and eighth graders on math and reading ability across the country. The dataset creates an easy tool to compare and contrast.
“They're being tested on a set of standards put together by the National Assessment Governing Board," Kleinert said. "So, they're not ideal standards and they're not standards for any other state so that it's equal all the way across the board."
The last time the assessment was given was in 2019, so a major takeaway since then:
“The metrics show us that something happened between 2019 and 2022, and I think everybody's well aware of that,” Kleinert said.
Oh yes, the pandemic. Learning loss has been a major concern. So, what do the NAEP big-picture results tell us about that topic?
“It was down across the board for the United States and for Idaho," Kleinert said. "What's interesting is that it was down in different areas for fourth grade. It was down a little bit more in Idaho. For eighth grade, it was down a little bit more everywhere else."
The NAEP assessment is scored between 0 and 500 on mathematics and reading. Two grades are tested, fourth and eighth, on both topics, math and reading.
In fourth grade reading, Idaho scored 215, with the national average at 216. Looking back, that score is lower than 2019 results, where fourth graders scored 223 in reading.
In fourth grade math, Idaho scored 236, with the national average just below at 235. Looking back to 2019, Idaho is down from a score of 242 that year.
On the eighth grade side, Idaho students scored 264 in reading with the national average at 259. Idaho eighth graders dropped from the 2019 score of 266.
In the math assessment, Idaho eighth graders scored 282, with the national average at 273. Eighth graders in the Gem State dropped from 2019 results, an average score of 286.
The data was published this week, so there is still a lot to dig into, but, some early takeaways:
“The interesting stories are in eighth grade. They went down less in Idaho than they did in the rest of the nation, and that paints a really good picture about what was happening in the state," Kleinert said. "What were teachers doing? How were students learning? And because of teachers doing such a great job, eighth graders floated to the top of the curve compared to the rest of the states. There are no states that did better than Idaho, significantly, in math grading. Eighth grade did fantastic reading. There were only two states that did better than Idaho. In math, zero states did better than Idaho.”
What about the fourth grade level?
“We notice that in fourth grade math, girls didn't do as well as boys when we dug into the data, and that's something that could be looked at in the future," Kleinert said. "It seems to be in general that girls could be social learners and because they weren't in person, they were working with each other, their peers and their teachers as much as they were before. That could be what happened, possibly."
Bottom line, there is expected learning loss, but Idaho schools appear to have stayed fairly consistent compared to other states. A major factor, Idaho educators.
“Know that your teachers did such an excellent job. They stuck to it. They were in the classroom, and they were promoting learning," Kleinert said. "The entire time students came to school, they learned wherever they were. However, they learned it was, let's remember that teachers did great."
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