The recent unveiling of national reading and mathematics scores has revealed discouraging trends on learning recovery with the main collective title: students do worse than before the start of the pandemic.
The factors behind the continuous drop in scores are multilayer, but teachers could tell you that the main reason why some students are not progressing is that parents do not do school work.
It is according to a Survey of 700 primary and college teachers By Study.com, an online learning platform, which questioned the educators in January on the students’ results.
Forty-six percent of the teachers interviewed appointed “lack of family prioritization of academics” as the main reason why some students have lagged behind.
Teachers also identified parents as the largest potential buoy in students’ progress, 87% saying that the increase in support for families and parents would have the greatest impact.
Dana Bryson, main vice-president of the social impact for Study.com, said a more in-depth examination of teachers’ responses revealed their desire to ensure that parents are more involved in the education of their children.
“My big point to remember is that it was not like” hey, the parents, you are apathetic “, says Bryson,” but it was actually more “, we have to do a better job to make sure that parents can be involved. “And all kinds of parents from all walks of life – not just parents, but caregivers.”
Unequal impact
The results of the national evaluation of educational progress, also called “splate of the nation”, do not seem too bad as long as scores are not issued by groups by factors such as ethnicity, income and if students learn to speak English.
“The only reason why the average is increasing, the way I interpret it is because the highest people are simply rising,” says Bryson. “But the lowest people are – many of them, in reading, in particular – go down, and socio -economicly disadvantaged people in particular.”
Hispanic, black and Amerindian students historically noted lower than their white and Asian counterparts – sometimes by a difference of 30 points depending on the subject and the school level.
In the fourth year, reading, for example, 47% of economically disadvantaged students at least satisfied the basic reading competence compared to NAEP standards, while this percentage was 74% for students who were not considered economically disadvantaged. There was also a difference in 23 points points in the fourth year mathematical competence based on the income category, 88% of high income students meeting basic standards and low -income students.
Bryson says that parents and caregivers can also be unevenly affected by their ability to participate in the education of their children. Some parents may find it difficult to understand class work or what’s going on in school because they don’t run English. Others may have a barrier when it comes to technology.
While almost 70% of the teachers questioned said that technological tools help students make up for it on a school level less likely Have a computer at home only other groups.
“We know there is a gap in access, especially for families at home,” she said. “Even in districts like (Los Angeles Unified School District) which have one ratio one by one with a student computer, this does not mean that parents have one or have access to it.”
Path to solutions
Parents ‘participation has been shown to increase students’ results in matters such as reading and mathematics, and that does not necessarily mean that parents should be able to help duties. Some data suggest Let parents try to help homework in mathematics aggravate students. Students improve in mathematics when parents motivate them, define high expectations and connect them to help school.
Schools try to bring the parents into the mixture. A district of Illinois Pilot a weekly summary for parents of the notes and the behavior of their children.
Steven Barnett, founder and main co -director of the National Institute for Research in Early Education, has been Disappointed but not surprised by the NAEP results – in particular in reading. Survey data Since its organization, noted that the percentage of parents who report reading to their children at least three times a week have dropped by around 12% since the start of the pandemic.
“I think that this engagement with literacy is probably not only with their children aged 3 and 4, that it just fell into all areas”, ” Barnett said. “What concerns me is that the next cohorts that arrive on NAEP will have had even more years of this low level. So I’m going to expect them to do even worse in the next one they did this time, unless we do something to reverse the share of this. »»
Barnett is a supporter of the enlargement of the high quality nursery school to improve academic results, and he says that learners in English benefit particularly from the additional year or two of schooling before the pre-k.
English learners have always obtained a score lower than their classmates in mathematics and reading, whatever the school level.
“A strong preschool program has an enormous accent on the development of the oral language,” explains Barnett. “There are huge differences in vocabulary – in particular, what we could call the academic vocabulary – between children who go to a strong preschool program and to children who do not. This is a foundation on which they will apply the skills they learn. If they do not know the words, they will not be more successful than I would be in Russian or Swahili. »»
While Barnett’s solution focuses on fundamentals, Bryson says that she and his organization’s partners examine how artificial intelligence could play a role in personalizing learning to help college and secondary students catch up. However, one of the first obstacles to manage is to fight against the false grass idea among some Latinos that the use of AI to study is a form of cheating, says Bryson.
“If we can really understand what is appropriate and get the right learning interventions, there is an opportunity,” she said. “Demystifying the use of AI (is) will be important because what we see happening is that families and communities that have been left to continue to be left behind – because they do not understand (IA) or have received a message (which they) should not use it.”
