In a revelation that will shock nobody with common sense, a new assessment has discovered countries that mandated shorter school closures during the Covid pandemic recorded better math scores than those enforcing longer ones.
Published by the National Center for Education Statistics, the Education Department’s “primary statistical agency,” the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) revealed that American students experienced a 13-point drop in their 2022 math scores “when compared to the 2018 [PISA] exam.” According to Axios, the average 2022 score “was not only lower than it was in 2012 but it was ‘among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics’ for the U.S, per the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.”
U.S. students performed above the OECD average in science and reading, however.
What’s notable about the 2022 PISA’s findings is the correlation between students’ math proficiency and how long their nation’s government locked them out of school in the name of Covid. As admitted by Axios, the report shows that a common theme shared by the 31 nations that “maintained or improved upon their 2018 math scores” was that they all implemented “shorter school closures during the pandemic and [had] fewer impediments to remote learning.”
In the years since the Covid lockdowns, studies emerged documenting the disastrous consequences wrought by state-enforced school closures. A 2023 analysis found that “elementary and middle schoolers in the U.S. need months of extra schooling to close pandemic-induced gaps.”
Meanwhile, data included in the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that
