Students around the world suffered historic setbacks in reading and math during the COVID-19 pandemic, with declines in test scores so widespread that the United States climbed in global rankings simply by falling behind less sharply, a new study finds.

The state of global education was given a bleak appraisal in the Program for International Student Assessment, the first study to examine the academic progress of students in dozens of countries during the pandemic. Released Tuesday, it finds the average international math score fell by the equivalent of three-quarters of a year of learning. Reading scores fell by the equivalent of half a year.

The setbacks spanned nations rich and poor, big and small, with few making progress. In the countries where students were tested, a quarter are now considered low performers in math, reading and science, meaning they struggle to perform basic math problems or interpret simple texts.

  • BURN@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I was in college for all this and it was a fucking mess. Teachers didn’t know how to teach, so they did the bare minimum (including sending us 3 weekly lectures they recorded 3 years prior) and didn’t grade anything.

    If you weren’t extremely self-motivated to finish anything, there were no consequences. The university couldn’t fail you, so why bother?

    I’m assuming those problems were 100x worse in the public school system

  • rhacer@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    This falls into the No Shit Sherlock category.

    My daughter’s fifth grade year, she was mostly her own teacher. She’s motivated and wants to do well, so it mostly, sorta, kinda worked for her.

    Any student not particularly motivated was in for ax world of difficulty.

  • Moob@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    As a teacher I feel like I need to put this as professionally as possible. Fucking duh!

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Wait “watching YouTube” isn’t the same as “doing research”?