An assessment known as "The Nation’s Report Card” shows students’ academic performance on reading and math still lags in Cleveland and the rest of the country, nearly five years after pandemic-related school closures.
Data for the new National Assessment of Educational Progress was collected in 2024, with results released Jan. 29. It tallies fourth-grade and eighth-grade student performance on tests in reading and math. NAEP Scores on average across the country were down in both grades and subjects compared to the previous assessment in 2022, aside from a small improvement in fourth-grade math scores.
"Around 40 percent of fourth graders are working below the NAEP Basic level in reading, the largest percentage since 2002," a press release from NAEP explains. "Fourth graders scoring below NAEP Basic likely cannot recognize a reason for a character's action implied in a story. About a third of eighth graders nationwide are failing to hit the NAEP Basic benchmark in reading — the largest percentage ever."
In Ohio, fourth-grade math scores were up compared to pre-pandemic levels, while fourth-grade and eighth-grade reading and math scores have not recovered. Just 32% of Ohio fourth graders and 31% of eighth graders are considered proficient in reading, the data shows, while only 42% of fourth-graders and 31% of eighth graders are proficient in math.
What about Cleveland?
At Cleveland Metropolitan School District – one of a handful of urban school districts that are tracked individually by the NAEP – scores across the board have basically held steady since the last assessment in 2022. However, students’ test scores across the board are still lower than they were in 2019. LaTisha Grimes, executive director of testing, assessments and logistics, says the school district is trying to catch students up.
“This is really concerning,” she said. “Our kids declined worse during the pandemic, which we know directly impacted the nation as well.”
The data also show CMSD has performed worse than the average urban school district on the NAEP assessment year-after-year for the last two decades. When asked, Grimes said, “while not an excuse,” Cleveland does have one of the highest poverty rates of any city in the country.
“So it’s not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison,” she said.
Cleveland is being compared to school districts in that also have high poverty rates, like Detroit, but also cities that are wealthier, like Austin, Texas. Cleveland's poverty rate is 30.8%, compared to Austin's 9.5%.
Grimes and Lisa Farmer Cole, chief external affairs officer, said the district implemented a new reading curriculum last year, which is its first time having a single curriculum for every school building, although some have questioned the effectiveness of that curriculum. The district is also moving to implement a new math curriculum starting next school year, Grimes and Farmer Cole said.
Shari Obrenski, president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, said the district has high transiency - students moving from one school to the next - and so having a single reading curriculum should help.
Farmer Cole and Grimes mentioned other ways CMSD is trying to create a better learning environment. That includes a campaign to cut back on chronic absenteeism supported by the Cleveland Browns, banning cellphone use in classrooms (which is required of all Ohio schools beginning with the 2024-25 school year) and a new online gradebook where parents can track test scores in real-time, the two administrators said.
“I think we are being very strategic about the way in which we are putting supports in place,” Farmer Cole said.
What’s the broader context?
Obrenski said students returning to in-person classes had far greater issues with misbehavior and in general, are exhibiting a lack of enthusiasm for learning, compared to pre-pandemic times.
She said students lost an "important developmental window" while online learning was happening.
"We just see a generation of children that are fundamentally different," she said. "And it is taking us time to figure out how to be most effective with them."
She added the NAEP, and schools in general, have been hyper focused on reading and math, to the detriment of students.
"It's the introduction of other subjects that will often actually push that (reading and math achievement) forward," she said. "So I think that when we strip everything down, which is what schools and not just schools, but the conventional wisdom, seems to suggest that you should do in times of crisis, that we probably end up doing more harm than good."
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an ideologically conservative education think tank, in a news release last week called the results a “disappointment.”
Aaron Churchill, Ohio research director for the Fordham Institute, in an interview said the lack of progress is despite the federal pandemic relief aid that flowed to schools over the last few years.
“We as taxpayers invested so much to try to recover after the pandemic,” Churchill said. “Ohio received five or six billion dollars in pandemic relief aid that was really designed to help students recover after the closures and the disruptions that happened in 2020 and 2021.”
In fall 2024, Ohio schools were mandated by the state to use science-of-reading backed curricula for reading; a phonics-based approach backed by research. Churchill said it will take some time for those efforts to bear fruit.
The Edunomics Lab at Georgetown’s McCourt School, which studies finance in education, in a release last week said states need to more closely monitor schools’ performance, and how policies and funding impact education.
“Looking ahead, school systems are unlikely to see the kind of funding increases of the last few years,” the release notes. “That means the task of recovery just got harder. Accelerating learning will require using money differently.”
Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman has said Ohio’s public-school funding model is financially “unsustainable.” That model, called the “fair school funding plan,” now in its fifth year, increased funding for public schools but requires the legislature approving it each year as part of the state budget. The Ohio Supreme Court previously declared Ohio's prior school funding model as "unconstitutional" for too heavily relying on local property taxes.
