

They were resorting to worksheets or they were resorting to videos from YouTube that were not very good and not very aligned to the kinds of things that kids were supposed to be learning that year. It could be that teachers were able to keep the features of ELA instruction that kept that high quality, but they couldn't do that in math. Something about the move to hybrid or the move to instruction being largely online. It's also possible, a third explanation is that it could be that math was just taught much less efficiently in the pandemic. So, if you miss fractions, you're going to have a hard time when you get to high school and you start learning algebra, because fractions are really the foundation for a lot of what's happening in algebra. School is the only place that kids, for the most part, learn math, and that's probably what's driving some of this.Ī second reason is that math is cumulative. So, a lot of those ELA skills are getting built even in the absence of kids being in school. They make arguments with their parents about how late they should stay out at night, or whether they should be able to get the extra popsicle after dinner.

They talk with their parents at the dinner table. Kids are exposed to ELA in many places in their daily lives. The thinking among most people is that math learning primarily happens in schools. There was not a policy but a national emergency and it moved those math scores a lot more than it moved the ELA scores. When I teach a class on the impacts of policies on ELA and math scores, it's not uncommon to find that math scores are actually moved by policy, they are affected by policy, and ELA scores simply aren't. One thing that we know from the research literature is that math scores have always been more sensitive to students' opportunities to learn. I think what was surprising to people was how much more the math scores dipped than the ELA scores. We knew that things were going to look bad. Heather Hill: This was not shocking to anybody who's been watching what the scores have been looking at, like from other assessments, like state assessments, like private companies that do assessments. First, I asked them what they thought about the NAEP scores showing such big declines in math. I wondered what makes it so hard to teach and learn math, and what can be done to change it. Jon knows firsthand considering he returned to classroom teaching during this time. They say teaching math during and after the pandemic has been uniquely challenging. They are Harvard experts on math instruction and curriculum. Heather Hill and Jon Star say math struggles aren't a new issue for students. The recent result of the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed huge drops in students' math performance, leaving many educators to ponder what happens next.
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In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, Hill and Star share why the scores dropped significantly, how challenging it can be to teach math, and ideas on how to move forward from this moment. It isn't what we know to be the most effective way to teach math, but that really is all that the teachers had at their disposal now.” it's not necessarily the teacher's fault, it's just the way that they've been forced to teach during the pandemic. “The ways that teachers have had to teach . So, there's going to be more use of worksheets, there's going to be more teacher lecture, there's going to be less student interaction,” Star says. “I worry a little bit that what affordances teachers have available to them in that instructional realm, they, in some way, emphasize what might be the least desirable aspects of math instruction that we would want to see.

The results showcased the effects of the pandemic and in particular how hard it was to teach math, say Professors Heather Hill and Jon Star. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress' Nation's Report Card showed big declines in students' math performance - in some cases, dipping as low as the numbers of 20 years ago.
