“That is trauma... All those things exacerbated the gaps that already existed.””

Dr. Linda Oehler-Marx

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SULLIVAN COUNTY, NY — The headlines are everywhere.

Decades of math progress erased by the pandemic. “Devastating impacts” on learning, both in math and reading, although reading scores are improving.

Innumeracy is not a good thing, according to Ellen Peters at the University of Oregon. People who don’t understand numbers and statistics—or who don’t care about them—are generally poorer and less healthy. Never mind the bad decisions made because they don’t understand what’s at stake.

So some panic ensued when standardized test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed a drop in students’ average math scores, from an average of 241 in 2019 to 236.

What’s behind it?

The view from here

Local administrators say it’s only partly about the numbers. Sometimes it’s a matter of traumatized kids.

“[The concept of] learning loss is problematic for me,” said Dr. Linda Oehler-Marx, assistant superintendent for curriculum at the Monticello Central School District. “COVID is ‘learning interrupted.’”

Consider what the kids went through. The rhythm of school was disrupted. Remote options may not have been available—not every student here has broadband, meaning they had to work in a library or school parking lot. And “it’s combined with trauma that is unprecedented,” Oehler-Marx said.

Relentless frightening news, sickness and death. No wonder the national suicide rate was up four percent for adults in 2021 over the previous year. The rate for males aged 15 to 24 went up eight percent, according to Kaiser Health News.

“That is trauma,” Oehler-Marx said. “All those things exacerbated the gaps that already existed.” For example, Monticello School District has a 68 percent poverty rate. “But even wealthy districts are struggling,” she said.

And be careful of extrapolating from national numbers. Sullivan West superintendent Dr. Kathleen Bressler pointed out that “national data sets are not always reliable when making school-based decisions.”

She wrote in an email, “they clump all schools into one set, no matter the size or area, and in the past three years many students have had very different school experiences.”

How many kids from a given district took a test? That matters. In New York, testing for grades three through eight was not required, nor were Regents exams, she wrote.

Which kids took the test? That would skew the results.

Fill in the blanks

National standardized tests, such as those from the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), are administered in grades four and eight. They’re designed to measure what kids learned, or figure out whether performance is improving—or not.

The tests cover English language arts and math.

States also have tests, both for grades three through eight and in high school.

Complicating the situation for Sullivan West, the district is rural, with uneven broadband access and a lack of public transportation.

“Rural schools saw increases in reading and decreases in math,” Oehler-Marx said.

The national results could be unreliable at this fundamental level. “The best information is what our teachers see in their classrooms,” Bressler said. “At Sullivan West, students have had interrupted seat time due to the pandemic.”

Learning math is like making a block tower—you build on what you learned before. So losing one or more of those blocks makes it hard to progress.

That makes “math intervention even more challenging,” said Oehler-Marx.

The right answers

“Our high school teachers did see concerns with students’ performance, and worked with Mr. [Mark] Plescia, the high school principal, to find ways during the school day to address their concerns,” Bressler said.

The labs are held during the school day, because kids might not have transportation.

Monticello has been focusing on rebuilding student understanding of concepts and fluency in math, Oehler-Marx said. There is prejudice to overcome. “It’s socially acceptable to say you aren’t good at math.”

At Sullivan West, Plescia and the math department have discussed gains made, and “all teachers spoke of the challenges students were facing, with the biggest being the students who were not able to access additional assistance during the school day (due to individual schedules) or after school (due to conflicts with activities or lack of transportation),” Bressler wrote.

They created three math lab periods during the school day, offered during the students’ lunch blocks. “This made the math labs accessible to any student in need of support.” Teachers and the guidance department identified students who could use the help and reached out.

“Early results have been positive so far this year,” she wrote.

The labs were all about local data, not national numbers. The teachers looked at the school’s data, considered why the students were performing the way they were—because they knew the students—and made a plan, Bressler wrote.

Monticello teachers reported a lot of challenges, Oehler-Marx said. The kids were all at different levels, so the teachers are adapting.

Part of the answer involves encouraging the students to consider how they think and learn about math. “We’re building mathematical understanding,” she said.

Students, like adults, saw what happened during the pandemic and are reevaluating their lives. “Living through the pandemic made us pause and reflect… They are asking if this is necessary,” Oehler-Marx said.

Students who need more help are getting it in both districts.

“Hopefully, we will continue to see gains, and if need be, the team will find other creative solutions, Bressler wrote.

Ongoing work

Teachers are watching for learning gaps. The curriculum is adapting.

Math can be taught—and learned—in so many ways. Through movement. Through number lines. Through rocks or blocks or cooking, so kids find the math that underlies the world.

But math also needs to be brought home. The community supports literacy, Oehler-Marx said. Families understand why reading matters.

But there’s a roadblock when it comes to numbers. “We have basic literacy programs,” she said. “We should be doing that for math.”