Education Leaders of Color Urges Bold Approach to NAEP Score Recovery

Narrow definitions of student success constrain efforts to achieve educational equity

Amid news of declining math and reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) following the pandemic, Krupa Desai, Chief Strategy Officer at Education Leader of Color (EdLoC), released the following statement:

“While we are concerned about declines in student performance following the pandemic, we urge stakeholders involved in the education ecosystem to take a holistic approach to recovery that accounts for a variety of student needs and circumstances. 

“It remains a fact of today’s status quo that communities of color have historically faced, and continue to be affected, by gaps in access to quality early care and education, high-quality teaching and learning, and higher education opportunities that position them to thrive.

We witnessed the pandemic exacerbate these longstanding educational inequities in real time. Families lost jobs, students lost parents, food and housing insecurity were heightened, and in a moment of extraordinary challenge for the world, everything took a backseat to survival.

“As leaders of color, many of whom experienced poverty as children, and who continue to live at the intersections of marginalized groups (e.g., Black, Latino, immigrant, woman, LGBTQ, etc.), EdLoC uniquely understands that thriving in this country is a multi-faceted endeavor. The importance of social, emotional, and economic well-being as a factor in student success cannot be overstated as we assess the pandemic’s impact on education and implement new measures to address academic declines. 

“It became increasingly understood, before the pandemic, that meeting educational standards depends on nurturing the whole child, because children were never succeeding in a context that ignored both broader societal inequities in access to housing, healthcare, food and nutrition and more, as well as their individual life circumstances. We urge education stakeholders to stay vigilant against a knee-jerk response to retreat back to old, ineffective pedagogical practices that deny our students’ wholeness.

“This includes the urge to embrace remediation as a viable way to help students catch-up on learning losses. Research shows that students respond best to accelerated learning strategies, especially in math, in which teachers begin with grade-level learning and address specific gaps as they emerge. 

“The recently released NAEP scores should be a reminder to funders, educators, and school administrators alike that educational progress for youth of color before the pandemic was linked to addressing the social and economic challenges they disproportionately face. That same approach is a necessary part of the endeavor to ensure the impacts of the pandemic's disruptions to learning do not become permanent.”