The learning loss that came about as a result of the pandemic and its shift towards remote schooling that began more than four years ago is still showing up in standardized test results, state officials said as they released the latest batch of MCAS scores.
“The road back from the pandemic is not short,” Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said during a press briefing on the 2023-2024 academic year test results.
Across Massachusetts, students in every grade level scored lower on English language arts in 2024 than they did a year prior — losing gains made last year in the subject and still far behind pre-pandemic scores.
The most dramatic losses were in fifth grade, where the number of students meeting or exceeding expectations fell six percentage points below last year’s fifth graders on the reading and writing portion of the test. Other grades dipped between one and four percentage points from last year.
Department of Elementary and Secondary Education lead officer for data assessment and accountability Rob Curtin said that the department generally considers a one percentage point difference as not being significant. The number of students at least meeting expectations in ELA fell a single percentage point in eighth and 10th grade, but there were more serious declines in all other grades.
Those dips are more significant compared to pre-pandemic scores — with grades three through seven still scoring at least 12 percentage points below 2019 scores on the ELA portion of the exams. Eighth graders are nine percentage points behind pre-COVID scores, and grade 10 is the closest to catching back up, trailing just 4 points behind what the 10th graders in 2019 scored on the test.
After a few years of students struggling to get back on track after coming back into the classroom, MCAS scores showed some uneven gains in English last year, and education officials struck a cautiously optimistic message.
In 2022, fourth and fifth graders actually…