It's Monday, March. I'm Oscar Ramirors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. The return of in person learning for students is here. Has yielded some improvements and test scores in reading and math, but still not to pre pandemic levels. Young students still seem to be struggling, especially those that were learning to read in the last two years. Sarah Randazzo, education reporter at the Wall Street Journal, joined us for how test
scores are rising. Thanks for joining us, Sarah, sure thing, let's check in with what's going on with our students right now and their test scores. Obviously, throughout the pandemic, it was a huge disruptor. We know that it didn't do so well for a lot of students that it was really tough transitioning to the remote learning, tough to keep focus, and we saw test scores dropped through all of that, both in reading and math. Right now, what we're seeing is a new study showing that students are
making some of those gains back. They're doing better now that in person classes have resoomed in a lot of places, but we're still not back to that those pre pandemic levels, So a lot of work to be done. There's there's so much information here, So Sarah, help us walk through some of this. What are we seeing with our students
now that we're back in school. Yeah, yeah, So for a while people have been wondering, will we ever get back to that level we would have been at had there been no pandemic and kids just continue to learn at that a normal pace, and it's looking like, you know, being out of school for the two years that many kids were out, it's hard to come back from and you're not just going to have instant recovery. But so what some of these studies are tracking now is looking
at the growth throughout the school year. So this recent study showed, okay, kids started in the fall still much further behind than they were the year before, but from fall to winter they were really advancing like you would expect a kid to advance it within a school year.
So people are kind of talking now about growth and saying, Okay, even if kids maybe don't have all the knowledge they would have had pre pandemic, are they just you know, from the beginning of the school year to the end, are they marching along and learning new skills throughout and that you know, a measure of of kids getting back to somewhat normal and then doing doing well in school again. Yea, our younger kids are still the ones that are set
back the most. The test results that they looked at were four point four million students from kindergarten in twelfth grade in reading and then two point nine million students in math. And the way you put in the article two, so early in the pandemic kids were struggling with matt skills the most. A lot of people said, maybe because parents weren't as a dept to help them with that. Right now, the reading now that you bring us bringing
us to present time, the reading is still behind right now. Yeah, and so especially and so this um the test results came out from a comany called Renaissance. It does something called the Star Test that is an optional test districts can do to help measure assessment throughout the year. And so l fifty states there's kids who take it. And so it was as mattering from across the country of
kids who take these Star tests. And what they found is that the kids who really only have had a pandemic education of kindergarten in first graders, especially those trying to learn to read in that pure are really struggling, you know, in all of their growth. And so those who haven't yet learned to read really had the lowest growth scores of any of the cohort that they looked at.
And so there's a bit of a concern about those kids who are still learning to read or haven't yet learned to read, and you know kind of where things go for them, because learning to read is crucial for pretty much your entire life. As you can imagine, once you get to third or fourth grade, they say you
stop learning to read and start reading to learn. And so if you don't have the learning learning to read part down, you can't read your science textbook and your social studies and then everything everything is built upon that base learning right there. So yeah, third grade and fourth grade are really critical right there. You know, there was a lot of students that attended this program is called
the Institute of Reading Development. They're a literacy organization, and they said about of those entering first grade this school year, we're reading below expectations. So just kind of illustrating, you know, those kids that we're doing that pandemic reading learning for the first time. It is just very difficult for it to click for them. Yeah, it's definitely what the institute found, and things like phonics and just learning do you know
the sound? Could you know the sound? You know, the students are having to go over that at a later age and then maybe some of them would have before. And so there's a few building blocks and learning to read. Phonics is one of them, and there's a few others, and teachers are really having to kind of start at the basics again and make sure kids have all those building blocks so they can really learn how to read.
I know there was a lot of conversations going on throughout the pandemic that had a lot to do with safety and everything. But you know, seeing the declines, seeing now the rebounds, although they're not to the pre pandemic levels, right, we're talking about that, it really illustrates how important the value of in person instruction is for our kids. And you spoke to a number of teachers and administrators also.
You know, they even for themselves, they were pretty alarmed when they came back and they saw how stunted they were academically and emotionally. Yeah, I spoke with districts in the Brea, Sco. Florida and California, so the across section, and all of them said that the in person element. Returning in person really has just helped hugely um for
some kids when their home. You know, teachers and administras were noticing they just especially the early early readers, they just weren't talking to as many people in the day, and so they just weren't able to even practice their language skills in the way that you are in a classroom and things you're being asked of you and you're turning to talk to your friend next to you, and so just physically being present and being able to engage and get more feedback doing hands on games versus just
reading it all really has helped get kids back. And certainly everyone did the best they could. District did everything they could to adapt to the online learning, and I think a lot of good development and especially good tech developments happened where now and more kids have access to computers and the like. So it wasn't all bad. But there's a lot to be said of being in person um and how that helps educate kids and how do
we continue to get back. You know, some of the people you spoke to said they'd like to maybe teach your concepts so that the kids could have a deeper learning of whatever they're teaching, rather than trying to cram everything in trying to make up for so much stuff. Yeah, I think people are trying to rethink, Okay, what does
it mean to get back to normal? Are we going to really try to kick off every single box of what someone should have had if if they were having a quote normal education, or should we just keep moving forward and just try to continue to engage and give kids lessons and um, you know, go maybe like that one educator, so go maybe deeper on a few concepts rather than trying to teach every single thing on a
chapter test. And so I think educators are looking now and figuring out what you know, going forward to get back to some kind of normalcy. And I think over all they're saying, as long as kids are continuing to grow and continue to advance, that's what we can do right now. And that's a good good progress and and and good for the kids. Right Yeah, some hopeful news. Now hopefully we can continue to take those gains back again.
Sarah Randazzo, education reporter at the Wall Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us, sure saying thank you. I'm Oscar pro Mirrors and this is in reopening America. You don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast