Math, reading performance dropped during pandemic

Tennessee student performance in math and reading fell during the COVID years, in line with troubling national testing figures showing precipitous pandemic-era declines.

Zoom in: The drops came despite interventions designed to blunt the pandemic's impact on Tennessee students.

What they're saying: "2019 told us how we were doing going into the pandemic," Tennessee education commissioner Penny Schwinn told the Tennessean. "2022 told us how much the pandemic impacted our students, especially our Black students in the state and then 2024 and 2026 are going to tell us how effective our recovery efforts and interventions have been."

The big picture: Test scores known as the Nation's Report Card, released on Monday, show the largest math declines ever recorded for fourth- and eighth-graders nationally, Axios' Noah Bressner reports.

• Math scores declined for those grades in nearly every state and district between 2019 and 2022, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress results.
• Reading scores also fell in most states during that timeframe, according to the Education Department, which released the scores.