Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos authored an article — provocatively titled “Shut Down the Department of Education” — for the summer print issue of The American Spectator. In that article, DeVos paints a picture of bureaucratic bloat, bemoaning the department’s singular focus on accruing political power. She writes: 

The department’s main function in elementary and secondary education has been to spend money … a lot of money. But over the course of its four-decade history, there’s scant evidence that the department has done anything to improve student outcomes. In fact, there is considerable evidence to the contrary. 

In case there was any doubt about DeVos’ assessment of the department she once steered, this week’s results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — otherwise known as the Nation’s Report Card — prove her point. As the New York Times reports, today’s 13-year-olds have the lowest performance in math and reading seen in decades. (READ MORE: Shut Down the Department of Education)

Though student performance in math and reading was in decline long before pandemic restrictions sent students home, school closures due to COVID sent performance down the drain. Performance in reading is the lowest since 2004, and math performance is the lowest since 1990. The Associated Press reports that this “plunge” in math scores is the greatest margin of loss ever recorded. These latest results, released on Wednesday, are the final data from the federal government measuring pandemic learning loss.

The NAEP is a standardized test given to 13-year-olds across the country, and it is regarded as one of the best indicators of academic competency. The New York Times explains that some unnamed education experts “believe there is too much focus on NAEP” because “the content of the exams, in many cases, has little overlap with the material that is actually taught in classrooms across the country.”

If the criticism of these anonymous experts is true, we should all be very worried. The NAEP measures basic math and reading skills through multiple choice questions. The Associated Press reports: 

Students were asked to read passages and identify the main idea or locate certain information. In math, they were asked to perform simple multiplication and tackle basic geometry, calculating, for example, the area of a square.

Evidently, there are problems in America’s classrooms. But even greater problems arose from keeping kids out of those classrooms in the first place. COVID restrictions kept children at home, even as many parents argued that the rules neither helped their children stay healthy nor aided them in learning. But don’t expect an apology or an admission of error from the government or school districts now that the dismal results are in. 

The educational trajectories of today’s 13-year-olds were disrupted by pandemic restrictions, which impacted the kids during a particularly important period of development. Mastery of foundational skills — like math and reading — usually occurs in late elementary to early middle school, but these kids spent their semesters learning online or missing extended portions of curriculum due to the “close contact” quarantine policies prevalent in many schools. 

The Associated Press reports that, though the decline in achievement dropped across the board, black, Native American, and low-income students showed the greatest declines in math performance. Whereas most white students showed a decline of 6 points, math scores for black students dropped by 13 points. 

The federal government had hoped to help students play catch-up by sending massive amounts of pandemic aid money to schools. But despite the newly funded expansions to tutoring and additional summer classes, students didn’t make the necessary gains. 

DeVos could have predicted those effects. The Obama administration’s $3 billion School Improvement Grants, which aimed to boost the scores of low-performing schools, failed miserably. In her article for The American Spectator, DeVos writes: 

[A] study found that “implementing any SIG-funded model had no significant impacts on math or reading test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment.” It was the largest-ever federal government investment in trying to fix failing schools, and it failed — miserably.

Now, the problem is snowballing. Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the organization that administers the NAEP exam, called the decline a “huge-scale challenge that faces the nation.” The money will keep flowing out toward schools, but it’s doubtful that scores will creep any higher. A stabilization of the decline might be all we can hope for in the coming years. 

Mary Frances Myler is a postgraduate fellow with the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government. 

READ MORE by Mary Frances Myler: 

Catholic Bishops Vote to Address Transgender Health Care

‘Fertility Equality’ is the Next Frontier for California’s Civil Rights Regime

‘Don’t Speak Out, You’ll Regret It’: UPenn Swimmer Breaks Silence