4 factors that contributed to the record low history scores for US eighth graders
Retrieved on:
Thursday, May 11, 2023
While one top U.S. education official described the scores as “alarming,” the official rightly pointed out that the decline actually began nearly a decade ago.
Key Points:
- While one top U.S. education official described the scores as “alarming,” the official rightly pointed out that the decline actually began nearly a decade ago.
- In my view as a historian of education reform and policy, the latest history and civics test scores were a predictable outcome.
- While it is difficult to establish an exact cause of the decline, here are four factors that I believe contributed to it.
1. Pandemic fears of learning loss
- When students gradually began to return to their physical school buildings after they were closed when the COVID-19 pandemic began, researchers, politicians and critics of teachers unions began to worry about learning loss in math and reading.
- Historically, when there are worries about test scores in core subjects like reading and math, other subjects become less of a priority.
2. The politicization of social studies education
- At the same time that many education experts were worried about learning loss in reading and math, conservative politicians were working incessantly to limit what can be taught in social studies.
- The tip line has since been quietly shut down.
- For some teachers, this political context has led them to self-censor and limit what they teach about American history, potentially depriving students of a richer understanding of the nation’s politics and policy.
3. Education budget cuts
- Although research has long shown that funding matters for student achievement, many school districts around the country are currently struggling for adequate resources.
- The pandemic has amplified existing racial and economic disparities – and recent national test scores in history and civics are an extension of those disparities.
- Not only were the average scores on U.S. history tests lower for Black students than white ones, but the decline from 2018 scores to 2022 was 42% greater for Black students.
- Black students collectively lost 4.5 points, or 1.8% of their average scores, from 2018 to 2022, versus 3.5 points, or 1.29%, for white students.
4. Teacher shortages
- Mounting job stress and the blaming of teachers have led many educators to leave schools altogether, generating widespread teacher shortages.
- With that in mind, low test scores in history and civics begin to make more sense.
Keys to improvement
- What American kids know – or don’t – about the nation’s history and civics is a reflection not of the kids, but of the political and economic circumstances that affect their schools.
- The factors that support student learning – funding, qualified teachers and high-quality curricula – are well known.