Why Are Kids Falling Behind? What Homeschoolers Need to Know About the Learning Recession
Last month, the educational world was inundated with stories about the so-called “learning recession” of the post-COVID era—an overall decline in student aptitude that has persisted for many years. After the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a predictable decline in educational benchmarks as young people suffered from its educational disruptions. At the time, many assumed that the aptitude scores would rebound in the post-pandemic world. New research published last month suggests the opposite. Not only has student aptitude not improved since COVID, but it’s increasingly plain that its decline predates the pandemic by many years.
Measuring Student Aptitude
Before we dive into the particulars, let’s talk about how student aptitude is measured in the United States. Stanford University and Harvard collaborate on the Educational Opportunity Project. The purpose of the Educational Opportunity Project is to conduct an annual deep dive into educational statistics gathered from the states, which are summarized and published in the Educational Scorecard, a report on the status of education.
Now, obviously, as homeschoolers, tools like the Educational Scorecard are of limited value because they deal exclusively with public education. Still, with 87% of American students in public schools (conventional or charter), the Scorecard helps homeschoolers understand the broader educational landscape in this country and where their children’s public school counterparts are trending. You can read more about the Educational Scorecard and view the report here.
The Educational Scorecard Report
This year’s report reveals a pretty stark picture of public education, especially in reading aptitude. Reading scores continued to nosedive across the board, a trend they have been on for many years. While many educational experts assumed that the decline in reading scores was due to pandemic-era disruptions, six years on, it is increasingly clear that this is not the case. In fact, not a single state had reading scores comparable to those in 2013, reflecting a consistent decline over the last thirteen years. The situation has become so acute that most states are implementing legislative changes to how reading education is handled.
The report is not all bad news. There were modest gains in other areas, such as mathematics. But overall, the report paints a troubling picture of a cohort of youth far less capable of reading comprehension than their peers from the previous generation.
What is the “Learning Recession”?
The long decline in student aptitude has been dubbed the “learning recession.” But when did this recession begin, and what is causing it?
Those who track this data note that something drastic happened around 2013. From 1990 to 2013, student aptitude steadily rose across all content areas. The gains were so consistent that the average fourth grader in 2013 could perform the same math skills as the average sixth grader could in 1990—a substantial amount of progress! The year 2013 represents the peak of this growth; after 2013, the trend reversed as scores began to decline consistently.
This decline began well before the pandemic and has continued unabated. In fact, looking at the numbers alone, it appears that the much-touted pandemic disruptions were negligible. Stanford University’s Sean Reardon, one of the authors of the report, said, “Particularly in reading, test scores were going down for four to six years before the pandemic. In fact, you wouldn’t really know there was a pandemic effect if you just looked at the last 10 or 12 years of test scores. There’s been just a steady kind of decline regardless of the pandemic” (source).
In essence, American students have been consistently getting “dumber” since 2013. But what has caused this persistent decline in student aptitude?
Legislative and Social Factors
There are two prevalent theories explaining the learning recession: one legislative, the other cultural.
On the legislative side, some point to 2013 as the year that Barack Obama gutted some of the strongest provisions of George W. Bush’s controversial 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandated demonstrable yearly progress from schools, objectively measured in the form of standardized test scores. Schools that could not demonstrate such progress were threatened with loss of funding. These provisions of the law were very unpopular, and in 2013, the Obama administration began issuing waivers to states, exempting them from these consequences. This effectively de-emphasized test-based accountability.
Culturally, social scientists pinpoint 2013 as the year that social media use began to explode among young people. A Pew Research study found that in 2014-15, roughly 1 in 4 teens said they used the internet “almost constantly.” By 2022, nearly half of the teens were. The researchers also point to international test data showing that lower-achieving students are the heaviest users of social media. Students who spend more time (7+ hours per day) on social media score lower than students who spend less time (1-3 hours per day). And this gap between the highest and lowest performers began to widen before the pandemic, not just in the U.S. but in many other countries as well.
These are, of course, merely correlations—and both factors might be to blame, as well as other causes less understood.
Is There Hope?
The Educational Scorecard does end on a positive note, praising the educational reforms in many states that are restoring phonics-based reading to their curricula. The improvements in math and other content areas should not be overlooked, and while reading remains down across the board, some states are closing the gap. One notable and surprising example is Louisiana. While Louisiana has historically been dead last in many national educational assessments, it is rapidly turning around. While no state has returned to pre-2013 levels of reading aptitude, Louisiana is the only state to have returned to at least pre-pandemic levels, with reading aptitude on par with 2019 levels.
The challenge posed by the learning recession is that we do not have the luxury of time. By the time its causes are fully understood—if they are ever fully understood—the damage is already done. Years of educational decline have already taken their toll. The experts seem to think we are currently in the very beginning stages of reversing the learning recession. Only time will tell.
Homeschooling for the Win
One thing is certain, though. The decision to homeschool amid this educational downward spiral is one of the most responsible things a parent can do. Yes, homeschooling can be challenging. Yes, it has its own risks and caveats. Even so, the persistent problems in the world of public education offer perhaps the most compelling reason today for an individualized home education.
What are your thoughts on this topic? I invite you to join other homeschooling parents and me in the Homeschool Connections Community or our Facebook group.
