BRWONSVILLE, Texas – It’s close to 5pm on Friday and Dolores S. Perez works hard at the Brownsville Public Library. She is also one of the most enjoyable people.
Perez, known to her students as D Ms. D, sits at the table with one of the young students clapping and singing as part of their lesson. The retired public school teacher stands out in a burning orange sweater, decorated with curly hairs decorated with soft brown berets.
Perez began coaching students around the time when the Covid-19 vaccine made it safe to meet in person. What began as a part-time gig for several students in 2021 is now busy six days a week.
As for the youngest student, Perez says she is a private tutor, and her students from kindergarten through fourth grade, and that she needs all the help of reading.
It’s not their fault, she says, or even their parents or school. That happened early in the pandemic, when children were stuck at home and glowing at school through computers.
“There’s no such thing as a one-on-one interaction with humans,” Perez says. “In the Zoom class, it’s a bit of a chunk on the screen.”
Perez could remain busy in the near future if new federal data on student performance in readings is any indicator.
The 2024 results of the National Report Card released last week by the National Center for Educational Statistics show that reading scores for third and eighth graders fell in six months ratings. The only score outperformed the results in 2019 was Louisiana’s performance in reading in fourth grade.
NCES Commissioner Peggy Kerr called a “serene” trend at City Hall about the results in Washington, DC
“The reading talk is discouraged and the continuous decline that began before the pandemic,” Kerr said. “The average score is the same as it was 30 years ago. Students are not where we need it or don’t want it.”
Read with numbers
For both fourth and eighth graders in 2024, average reading scores fell by 2 points, standing at 215 and 258, respectively. This is down from the high of 223 for fourth graders in 2015, and from the high of 268 for eighth graders in 2013.
Kerr brought attention to the growing gap between the highest and lowest achieved players. Scores are decreasing most rapidly among the most struggling students.
The average reading scores for fourth and eighth graders in the 90th percentile were not statistically different from 2022 to 2024. Hai flyers scores for both grades have been fairly stable over the past 30 years.
The average reading average for fourth-grade students in the lower 10th percentile fell four points to 158, 17 points lower than the highest year in 2009.
The eighth graders in the bottom 10th percentile had a 5 percentage point average score, 19 points below their lowest score since 1992 and highest average.
The proportion of students who are unable to reach the basic level of achievement of NAEP is increasing. At the basic level, students in the fourth grade are Demonstrate your skills Use context to collect word meanings and identify problems mentioned in passages. Grade 8 should be able to develop opinions based on the text and use details to answer specific questions.
Of fourth graders across the country, 40% failed to reach the basic reading skills of NAEP. That percentage has grown even larger in some groups when decomposed by race, creating more than half of students from Hispanic, Black, American Indian or Alaska.
Of all eighth graders, 33% were unable to achieve basic reading comprehension. The failure rate for Hispanic, black and native students was above 10 percent points.
Before and after
Perez students come from all life and schools, including public, private, charter, and homeschool.
The third and fourth graders, who were currently in kindergarten or Pre-K, would have been when schools across the country were first distant due to the pandemic. These early grades are key times for students to learn social skills, self-regulation, and how to function in the classroom in general.
Pérez also says students are redeveloping the work ethics they need to do well in school. Although she hadn’t taught during the pandemic, she saw friends and family struggling to replicate the way teachers motivate students to work.
“How do you rate a child sitting behind a computer?” Perez says. “All over, they just showed up and ran away, and you get credibility. Everyone got the abbreviation version of Learning.”
Perez says third and fourth grade students will quickly catch up with individual support. There, each lesson can be tailored to personal interests, depending on whether the student is a history enthusiast or dinosaur enthusiast. However, her brand of tutoring services is not accessible to all children.
“Some parents have a way to get help, but I think about all the children that parents don’t,” Perez says. “They are even more behind, and it’s a large population. In all other subjects, you need to read almost everything in the world. That affects lagging behind every aspect of their learning.”
First and second grade students will generally read Perez at the kindergarten level, she says, and Perez says that basic letter sounds, how to link sentences, how to create sentences, and ” I’m working on skills that will allow you to answer, “What did you read?” ? ”
Approximately a quarter of kindergartens are students up to second grade who participate in dual language programs in English and Spanish. These English learners have some special challenges when learning to read and write in two languages where the alphabet and sound overlap.
“For a little chiquito, it’s all muddy. It’s all in one language,” she says.
Perez offers examples. She may ask students to write phrases such as “Look at the boy.” Children who grew up speaking Spanish at home can write “si” using letters that make long e-sounds in Spanish. Perez reminds them that the twins create a vowel sound with “See.”
“It sounds like “ye,” but that’s “Y,” Perez has to explain.
“And they ask me, ‘Why?’ “She continues with a laugh. “It’s interesting for them, but that’s where they have to do an autopsy between the two languages. If you’ve ever unraveled a thin gold chain, then what is it like? ”
Early (childhood) investment
Stephen Burnett, The founder and senior co-director of the National Institute of Early Education says that no one wants to see the NAEP reading results.
“Especially because we’ve made very good progress for a while,” he says.
Until recently, the federal government poured millions of dollars into schools.
Another solution, Barnett said, could help enhance student achievement, although it has a high price tag.
He points out the success that he found out that his organization came out New Jersey Pre-K System In poor areas of the state. Data show that children who started pre-program children at age 3 scored better on the standardized tests in 8th grade than about 10 points in the past cohort. Burnett argues that it is more than a supplement to the backslide NAEP of recorded readings between 2022 and 2024.
“This is not a simple solution or a cheap solution,” he says. “It’s like adding another two years of schools in terms of cost to the system, but it shows that we can turn things around. Looking at this period when our NAEP scores are decreasing, we see that kindergartens are There was little change in the number of children going to the school.
Kindergarten is also essential when parental involvement is declining, says Burnett. The Pre-K program sets the foundation for children’s reading, writing and social skills, he adds – a place where young children learn to grow vocabulary and become part of the classroom .
“Looking like a teacher, focusing on what someone else wants you to focus on, that’s a skill you have to develop,” says Barnett. “One of the biggest problems when talking to teachers about children is that the child does not have these skills, no language. The next cohort that comes to NEAP has these at a lower level. So, I hope we do something even worse unless we do something to turn this around.”
