An exam known as the "Nation's Report Card" showed a major drop in reading and math scores among age-9 students.
FRANKLIN COUNTY (WSIL) - The recently released "National Report Card" evaluates the test scores of thousands of school children across the country. It's the first nationally representative study on COVID's effect on education.
The findings are stunning. Math scores saw their furthest decreases ever, and reading scores dropped to 1992 levels. That's on a national level, but what about here at home?
It's no shock to local school administrators that the COVID pandemic had a dramatic impact on student learning and retention.
"All the school improvement work we've been doing, as we went along, was suddenly stopped by Covid," explained Superintendent of Frankfort schools, Matt Donkin. "No one should have expected this to be an anomaly. We shut everything down."
Donkin has more than 20 years in education. He's not surprised by Covid's of impact on scores. His said he's concerned with getting the numbers leveled off and without continued disparity.
"I think where we are is trying to stop the zagging of our numbers and our performance, and I think we're seeing that, but also to see that as a whole group," Donkin said.
Donkin said Frankfort schools have implemented after school programs, lowered teacher to student ratio, and have one on one time with teachers... But it looks like this year will be a post-covid jumping off point for education.
"We've made a conscious effort," he said. "This is going to be a baseline this year, like we are every time the tests change, and see where we can build from here."
First year principal at Christopher Elementary School, Kashia Cook, agrees.
"I feel like this is a baseline for me for many reasons," Cook said. "This is my first year, so it will be my own personal baseline, but also yes, across the state of Illinois, it will be a good fresh start for everyone. "
Cook said she knew scores were tremendously affected by COVID. Christopher also has special programming in place but will be initiating new programs this school year to try to offset the effect of COVID. Cook said she's using these scores as a catalyst for improvement.
"We are using those scores from last year and past practice and try to motivate us to do the best that we can next year," she explained.
Christopher and Frankfort administrators both said an essential part of seeing these numbers improve are addressing the social and emotional effects Covid had on students. Christopher will be implementing a grant driven curriculum in the spring to address just that.
