Introduction
The main reason for this meeting is to discuss some issues in our schools. It is our culture to be competitive and push our students to perform better in their examinations. Thus, when there are any changes in how our students have performed, they better be addressed. Thus, this meeting is crucial in understanding the trajectory of our student’s performance by understanding the past issues in the school and the country.
Main Body
Over the past years, Ney Jersey students have performed better in the country score statistics over the past years. The fourth graders in the state took the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exams last year and recorded the lowest performance since 1990 (New Jersey Department of Education, 2021). In three years, from 2019 to 2022, the fourth graders dropped 7 points in math tests result. Such a drop has not occurred in more than 30 years. We must ask ourselves why such a drop has happened and what we need to do about it. The Dynamic Learning Maps (DLM) State Summary Report data shows that students have shown that students an average of 58% in Mathematics scores (Kecojevic et al., 2021). Before, students had more than 68% overall scores in mathematics.
In the last three years, the world has been hit by a health emergency without precedent in this century – the Covid-19 pandemic, which, to a greater or lesser extent, has plagued the population of almost all countries. In addition to the lives lost and the financial, according to Kecojevic et al. (2021), material and social costs resulting from the necessary isolation measures adopted to reduce the spread of the virus, much has been said about the actions that schools have undertaken to support, albeit minimally, their students, both in food support provided by the school meal or in the didactic-pedagogical activities of implementing the curricula. Faced with this context of crisis, some research has been and is still being carried out to measure the impact of school closures on student performance in these last three years. In New Jersey, comparing school performance in different historical series is possible thanks to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exams which have been monitoring the performance of the country’s students in Mathematics for almost 30 years.
Everyone present here has felt the hit of the pandemic and understands how serious the issue is. Students are no exception and have also been affected, from psychological issues such as stress to physical issues such as school closures (Kecojevic et al., 2021). Children have been unfairly affected by school closures due to the Covid pandemic because not all have access to the resources they need to continue learning during the pandemic. School closures have been an abrupt end to education for millions of students, not a temporary interruption.
The truth is that to put it mildly, very few people anticipated a pandemic of the magnitude of COVID-19. Numerous industries are having trouble adapting to and overcoming this challenging circumstance. According to Gopal et al. (2021), unpreparedness in advanced technology that can be an instrument that facilitates the learning process shows that the field of education cannot avoid these enormous challenges. Most schools do not provide vital help for remote or distance learning. Additionally, young people were unaccustomed to intensive study schedules at home, where they typically place a high value on rest and entertainment. In general, students, especially those in kindergarten and elementary school, did not have the maturity to deal with the autonomy that comes with distance learning.
There are various typical challenges that affect the current education institutions. According to Dorn et al. (2021), every government’s and school’s recovery plans must include education, which must be free and available to all children worldwide. Back-to-school programs should look at who dropped out and who returned, and governments and schools should ensure that all dropouts get social and financial benefits. Back-to-school campaigns must include children and adolescents who were already out of school when schools were forced to close. All governments, schools, and international actors that help them should stick to their promises to improve inclusive public education systems.
Conclusion
2021/2022 NAEP scores show a notable fall in mathematics scores across New Jersey. Schools recorded a 58% overall mark, which is 7 points lowers than the past 30 years, which has been more than 70%. The realization of NAEP was extremely important, showing what happened to student learning with the closure of schools and subsidizing educational authorities for the implementation of policies to resume the performance growth trend that had been taking place. This education-and-coronavirus scenario is new to everyone, so we should not be afraid. Most importantly, we can humbly identify these flaws and work to fix them. Students learning deserves special attention, which showed a greater drop in performance. It is important to implement pedagogical actions to recover this segment since learning at the beginning of elementary school can negatively affect students’ future performance throughout their school life.
References
Dorn, E., Hancock, B., Sarakatsannis, J., & Viruleg, E. (2020). COVID-19 and student learning in the United States: The hurt could last a lifetime. McKinsey & Company, 1.
Gopal, R., Singh, V., & Aggarwal, A. (2021). Impact of online classes on the satisfaction and performance of students during the pandemic period of COVID-19. Education and Information Technologies, 26(6), 6923-6947. Web.
Kecojevic, A., Basch, C. H., Sullivan, M., & Davi, N. K. (2021). The impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on mental health of undergraduate students in New Jersey, cross-sectional study. PloS one, 15(9), e0239696.
New Jersey Department of Education. (2021). School Year 2020-21 Assessment Reports. Web.