THE STATE OF CHILDHOOD LITERACY IN THE UNITED STATES The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) findings reveal an unsettling portrait of childhood literacy trends in the United States. With 37% of fourth graders performing below the NAEP Basic level in reading, the percentage of students in the United States who achieve baseline literacy standards has decreased by approximately 14% since 1992, with a three-point loss since 2019—the largest score drop since the test began. The drop in test scores spanned student race, income levels, and school type and location, disproportionately affecting students in the bottom 10th percentile nationwide—students who are more likely to be from low-income communities and communities of color. Though sobering, the decline in reading scores is not unexpected. Educators and families have raised concerns about literacy skills since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic led to approximately 130,000 school closings in the United States, impacting 57 million children (Bao et al., 2020). During pandemic school closures, 93% of students nationwide engaged in some form of distance learning (US Census, 2020). While some young people continued to thrive in distance classrooms, many struggled, especially younger students in kindergarten, first, and second grade, most of whom had not experienced in-person learning prior to the pandemic. In their 2022 report for NWEA, Meghan Kuhfeld and Karen Lewis found that first- and second-grade student achievement at the end of 2021–2022 was lower compared to prepandemic trends in reading by nearly seven percentile points (Kuhfeld & Lewis, 2022). Additionally, given the widespread closure of public institutions and organized activities during the pandemic, researchers hypothesize that 67% of kindergarten literacy skills were lost as part of a COVID-induced extended school closure slide. Data also suggest that students attending schools primarily serving children of color or located in low-income areas were disproportionately affected by closures, an unsurprising finding considering the fact that the pandemic delivered a devastating blow to the physical health of those living in these areas. Black and Latino people were four to nine times more likely than white people to be infected with COVID (Figueroa et al., 2020).
READING FOR LIFE: THE IMPACT OF YOUTH LITERACY ON HEALTH OUTCOMES 2
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs