“The Ugly Truth”: Teacher At Breaking Point As Students Can’t Handle Simple Tasks

In the United States, far more students attend public schools (63 million) than private ones (11.2 million).

However, some teachers believe that the system is failing them. Last year, a 7th-grade teacher went viral for claiming that kids in his classes were way behind and had 4th-grade skills.

A few days ago, a now-deleted Reddit user who went on the platform by the nickname DragonfruitBright810 brought back attention to this topic by listing all the areas in which their 15- to 18-year-olds are slacking.

There's some data to back up the teacher's concerns. For example, math and reading scores among America's 13-year-olds fell to their lowest levels in decades, with math scores plunging by the largest margin ever recorded, according to the results of a federal test known as the nation's report card.

The results, released in June, are the latest measure of the deep learning setbacks incurred during the pandemic. While earlier testing revealed the magnitude of America's learning loss, the latest test casts light on the persistence of those setbacks, dimming hopes of swift academic recovery.

More than two years after most students returned to in-person class, there are still "worrisome signs about student achievement," says Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the federal Education Department.

In the national sample of 13-year-old students, average math scores fell by 9 points between 2020 and 2023, while reading scores fell by 4 points. The test, formally called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, was administered from October to December in 2022 to 8,700 students in each subject.

Similar setbacks were reported the year before when NAEP released broader results showing the pandemic’s impact on America's fourth- and eighth-grade students.

Though math and reading scores had been sliding even before the pandemic, the latest results show a precipitous drop that erases earlier gains in the years leading up to 2012 — scores on the math exam, which has been given since 1973, are now at their lowest levels since 1990, and reading scores are their lowest since 2004.

The United States, the world's largest economy, is far from a global leader in education, even as it spends more per student than many other countries.

In math, the US ranks 28th out of 37 participating countries from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, made up mostly of industrialized democracies that account for a majority of world trade.

Even relatively affluent U.S. students did not score as high in math as the average-performing students in top places like Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong.

Perhaps equally concerning: one in three U.S. students scored below a basic level of math proficiency, indicating that they struggle with skills they may need in the real world.

"I don't think you can drop much lower," says Andreas Schleicher, the director for education and skills at the O.E.C.D., which oversees the exam. "You don't want to compare the U.S. to less advanced economies," he adds.