I understand that, but none of that is unique to Mass and NJ. Other states faced the same increased costs, strained budgets, pandemic, etc etc, but did not suffer a similar performance drop.
Some states get more of their school funding from the state, so I would guess (3rd time today!) that they would see less fallout at the bottom of the ladder than the states that depend on property taxes. Put differently, that source of funding puts lower SES kids at greater risk. This really showed up in the pandemic when kids at better funded schools were getting devices to use and had internet to use it and kids in lower income schools had nada. When the state provides funding, the less well off schools still have something.
Having said that, I don’t know how MA funds its schools (or if that’s the reason therr.)
And that’s just a guess, but I definitely was hearing of kids in districts in NJ who had very little school during the pandemic because of tech deserts. If a summer causes losses, I can only imagine what the pandemic did.
Maybe not. Seems like military service members would be less likely to be at the top or bottom of the SES range, compared to a state population.
@roycroftmom if you look at NJ from 2017 to 2011 there was no change in 4th or 8th grade reading scores and an increase in 4th grade reading scores. 8th grade math scores did drop a bit over those years. 2019 then dropped. Hard to decipher the reasons for those changes. The 2022 changes in the chart above certainly reflect the pandemic losses
The article supports that well-funded, well-resourced schools with decent teacher pay and facilities make a difference. Having teachers remain for longer periods also seems to be plus, and having high pay helps keep teachers there. Having involved and supportive parents certainly is a factor.
As @ChoatieMom said, even with all the resources and support, the level of proficiency is only 55%, which seems like a low bar.
Interesting that the curriculum is very set, with little teacher input.
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Which leads to the obvious follow-on question-why were the pandemic learning losses so much greater in NJ, than in NY, Pennsylvania or any other neighboring state? If well-funded schools were the answer, NYC, DC and Boston should have stellar scores with their $30-40k annual cost per student.
Standardized curriculum is expected in most of the world outside of the US.
I’m not sure what teachers could/would do to improve scores with curriculum. Seems to me that simplification is called for. If students cannot read, write, and perform basic math, I’m not sure why other more complex subjects need to be introduced.
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it’s a huge leap to go from “scores fell” to “students can’t read.”
In my home state, our scores on state standardized tests have fallen precipitously in a few distinct years, but it was largely because those were re-normed, with the standard for passing getting elevated (so what was considered “grade level” one year becomes “below grade level” in the next year). It doesn’t mean kids lost skills, just that the test redefined the skills they had and raised the standard for what schools are expected to teach.
And failing the test doesn’t necessarily mean a student is illiterate and/or cannot do basic math; it just means they’re below whatever standard has been set for a given achievement level.
None of this means that it’s wonderful if students aren’t reaching proficiency; I’m just trying to point out that it’s not at all clear that a failing score means that a student cannot read, write or perform basic math.
finally, I looked up the NJ NAEP score report, and interestingly, it shows that the performance of NJ students is still well above the national average, at least in Grade 4 reading (I didn’t look at every grade level/subject). In fact, NJ was among the highest-testing states in the whole country: [The Nation’s Report Card: 2022 Reading Snapshot Report: New Jersey Grade 4 (ed.gov)](https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/stt2022/pdf/2023010NJ4.pdf
PA gets more funding from the state, so it’s more equitable. If the state averages $10,000/ student in spending, and everyone gets $7000/student, that’s the floor. That may have meant that lower income kids got tablets, for exsmple, during the pandemic. If half the districts don’t supplement, the remainder spend, on average $13,000 per student.
A lower income district in NJ might only get $3,000 per student with an expectation that property taxes will make up the difference.
Some districts may kick in very little while others may kick in a whole lot. The sverage per student may be higher, but at the low end, funding per student (and the ability to manage a crisis) will be lower.
It’s an oversimplified example, but the point is that because a range makes the total, it doesn’t mean every student gets that. The floor will be impact by how funding is done. (This has created a whole host of adjacent issues in NJ, including tiny districts that cannot merge with others, etc.)
TLDR, NJ has a pile of seriously underfunded districts who serve a lot of kids who almost certainly suffered disproportionately from the pandemic (among other things.)
Interesting. Is this unique to NJ and are any attempts made to fix this?
I really don’t know the answer to that. It happened in the 90s as part of a reduction to state income taxes. The needs were still there so the burden moved to property taxes. It plays out in a number of different ways, few of them good!
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