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Scores from standardized tests that students in Vermont took this spring have revealed declines compared to pre-pandemic results – including a double-digit drop in math proficiency, a report says.
When comparing 2019 Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium testing scores to the 2021 numbers released by the Vermont Agency of Education, math proficiency fell from 52% to 41%, for third graders, 42% to 30% for fifth graders and 40% to 31% for eighth graders, according to WCAX.
Meanwhile, English scores slumped from 50% to 42% for third graders, 56% to 49% for fifth graders and 53% to 51% for eighth graders, the station adds.
Students attend classes in a classroom separated by thin partitions at Burlington High School's new campus in Burlington, Vt., on March 16. "Downtown BHS" opened its doors to students on March 4, with the campus having been transformed from an old Macy's department store into a school. Though students were scheduled to go back to in-person learning in September, the plan was pushed back and the school was closed after elevated levels of cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were detected in several buildings. (Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
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"The learning environment was just not conducive to high performance in any way," Ellen Baker, the educator licensure program director at the University of Vermont, told WCAX. "People cannot be available to learn if they are traumatized."
Baker believes remote learning, a lack of interaction with peers and students’ situations at home influenced the scores, according to the station.
"It does align and help us to understand the scores based on the fact that students have not been in school -- for some of them -- a year," she said, adding that "if families were unable to get their kids to sit in front of the computer to do their work, they were just missing out and there was nothing we could do as an educational system."
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But Wendy Geller, the data management and analysis division director at the Vermont Agency of Education, told WCAX that the tests are designed for regular instruction – not the type of learning students have received during the coronavirus pandemic.
"The context for last year was anything but typical," she said.
