“The middle class is shrinking,” said Peggy Carr, director of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers TIMSS in this country. Mr Kerr said this group of students was being relegated to the bottom. This is a pattern that has been seen on various tests and in various subjects since the pandemic, he said.
U.S. 4th graders participating in TIMSS, 1995-2023, by student percentile
Another way to understand the median shrinkage is to see how few American children meet basic math standards. Tests revealed that 13% of fourth graders were unable to add and subtract numbers up to three digits, multiply and divide single digit numbers, and solve simple word problems. In 2019, the last year the test was administered, only 7% of fourth graders could not handle these basics. By 2023, 32 percent of American fourth graders will not be able to reach the second of four levels known as “intermediate.” This means they cannot multiply three-digit numbers, add decimals, or measure straight-line distances. In other words, one-third of fourth graders struggle with grade-level math.
England, Germany and Portugal all had large numbers of pupils reaching and exceeding these bottom two levels. (Click here to see how many fourth-graders in each country reached the four levels: lower, intermediate, advanced, and advanced.)
“The decline of centrism is what defines America,” Carr said. The drop in the middle was most pronounced in fourth-grade math, but another 2023 international assessment, also released this month, found similar declines in skills for the average American adult between the ages of 16 and 65. Carr said he noticed.
The growing dichotomy of math skills between a small cluster at the top and a growing cluster at the bottom, with a hollow center, reflects the distribution of income among U.S. households. “Society is what it is,” said labor economist Goldhaber, who worries that the loss of education caused by the pandemic will make it difficult for many young Americans to earn a good living. I am doing it. “They predict that inequality will be even higher in the future,” he says.
Even the highest-scoring 8th graders are showing declines in math skills.
The story of 8th grade math is different than the story of 4th grade. The achievement gap between the lowest-scoring and highest-scoring eighth-graders has not widened. However, the math performance of the top students dropped dramatically, by 50% below that of the bottom students.
It is not clear what is behind the decline.
These 8th graders were in 5th grade when the pandemic hit in spring 2020. Despite tutoring and extra help at home, many students in the top 90th percentile don’t seem to be mastering middle school math skills as well as their previous high-scoring eighth graders. .
These results demonstrate the importance of math instruction in schools as children grow up, and how difficult it is for even wealthy families to make up for lost time in class.
Gender disparity reignited
Historically, American boys have outperformed girls on math tests. This gender gap closed among eighth graders in 2015. However, the gender gap reappeared in 2023 as scores plummeted. The gender gap persisted in fourth-grade math, but by 2023 boys will outperform girls by the largest margin ever.
Boys once again outperform girls in 8th grade math.
Historical differences between boys and girls in fourth grade math
“Crazy” patterns around the world
Professor William Schmidt of Michigan State University has spent decades studying international assessment and analyzing mathematics curricula around the world. He called the 2023 TIMSS results the “craziest” he had ever seen and said it was difficult to understand the mixed results. Although some high-performing countries fell significantly, they remained at the top. Meanwhile, Turkish students, who had never been among the top performers, suddenly rose to the top. It will take some time to understand what that means. (This is the international ranking of mathematics for 4th grade elementary school and 2nd grade junior high school students.)
Students in Sweden, whose schools remained open during the pandemic, saw a significant rise in math scores from 2019 to 2023, with fourth-graders achieving records. Still, analysts were unable to determine whether shorter school closures were consistently associated with improved math performance. In some cases, scores moved in opposite directions within the same country. For example, fourth graders in the UK did not make progress, while eighth graders in this country improved. COVID-19 closures were similar for both student groups. Schmidt said it will take researchers more time to collect and analyze this data. (Below are the mathematics scores of fourth graders and eighth graders in each country from 1995 to 2023.)
Calculate the impact of the new coronavirus
Another mystery is how much of the decline in U.S. math scores is due to the coronavirus and how much is due to other problems in U.S. math education. In particular, U.S. fourth-grade math performance has been declining since 2011. Eighth grade math performance has been declining since 2015. Had the pandemic not occurred, it could have continued to decline from 2019 to 2023.
Reasons to be hopeful
It is discouraging that the United States consistently lags far behind the top 10 countries in mathematics. (In the 2023 TIMSS, U.S. 8th graders ranked 22nd out of 44 countries and subnational regions.)
Still, 360,000 of America’s eighth graders are in the top 10 percent of the most highly performing of the four levels. Tom Lovelace, an independent researcher who studies international evaluations, said average students in top-performing Singapore perform just as well, but the city-state has a total of just three eighth-graders. It is said that there are only 3,000 people. Some of these forward-thinking U.S. students may eventually develop skills to treat cancer or find cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels. . Some people will start businesses and promote the American economy.
“One of the lessons from this is that America’s size makes up for a lot,” Loveless said. “We put 360,000 kids through high school every year, and they know a huge amount of math.”
Another potential bright spot is that this TIMSS test was conducted a year and a half ago, in the spring of 2023. Since then, some state tests in 2024 have shown a rebound in students, however small. Scores from spring 2024 have increased in New York, Florida, and California. “Forty years from now, these TIMSS scores may be the lowest that represents the full impact of the pandemic,” Loveless said. “Maybe there will be progress in the future.”
If there is a rebound, we should be able to detect it in the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) conducted earlier this year. These scores are expected to be released in early 2025. I’m keeping an eye on it.
Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
