WASHINGTON: America’s children have continued to lose ground on reading skills in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and have made little improvement in math, according to the latest results of an exam known as the nation’s report card.
The findings are yet another setback for US schools and reflect the myriad challenges that have upended education, from pandemic school closures to a youth mental health crisis and high rates of chronic absenteeism. The national exam results also show growing inequality: While the highest-performing students have started to regain lost ground, lower-performing students are falling further behind.
Given every two years to a sample of America’s children, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered one of the best gauges of the academic progress of the US school system. The most recent exam was administered in early 2024 in every state, testing fourth- and eighth-grade students on math and reading.
“The news is not good,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the assessment. “We are not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground our students lost during the pandemic.”
Among the few bright spots was an improvement in fourth grade math, where the average score ticked up 2 points on a scale of 500. It’s still 3 points lower than the 2019 pre-pandemic average, yet some states and districts made significant strides, including in Washington, D.C., where the average score increased 10 points.
For the most part, however, American schools have not yet begun to make progress.
The average math score for eighth grade students was unchanged from 2022, while reading scores fell 2 points at both grade levels. One-third of eighth grade students scored below “basic” in reading, more than ever in the history of the assessment.
Students are considered below basic if they are missing fundamental skills. For example, eighth grade students who scored below basic in reading were typically unable to make a simple inference about a character’s motivation after reading a short story, and some were unable to identify that the word “industrious” means “to be hard working.”
Especially alarming to officials was the divide between higher- and lower-performing students, which has grown wider than ever. Students with the highest scores outperformed their peers from two years ago, making up some ground lost during the pandemic. But the lowest performers are scoring even lower, falling further behind.
It was most pronounced in eighth grade math: While the top 10 percent of students saw their scores increased by 3 points, the lowest 10 percent decreased by 6 points.
“We are deeply concerned about our low-performing students,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policies for the exam. “For a decade, these students have been on the decline. They need our urgent attention and our best effort.”
The latest setbacks follow a historic backslide in 2022. In that year’s exam, student achievement fell across both subjects and grade levels, in some cases by unprecedented levels.
But Carr said poor results can no longer be blamed solely on the pandemic, warning that the nation’s education system faces “complex challenges.”
A survey done alongside the exam found in 2022 that fewer young students were reading for enjoyment, which is linked to lower reading scores. And new survey results found that students who are often absent from class — a persistent problem nationwide — are struggling the most.
“The data are clear,” Carr said. “Students who don’t come to school are not improving.”
The results provide fresh fuel for a national debate over the impact of pandemic school closures, though they’re unlikely to add clarity. Some studies have found that longer closures led to bigger academic setbacks. Those slower to reopen were often in urban and Democratic-led areas, while more rural and Republican-led areas were quicker.
The new results don’t show a “direct link” on the topic, Carr said, though she said students clearly do better when they’re in school.
Among the states that saw reading scores fall in 2024 are Florida and Arizona, which were among the first to return to the classroom during the pandemic. Meanwhile, some big school systems that had longer closures made strides in fourth grade math, including Los Angeles and New York City.
The success of big urban districts — 14 of which saw notable improvement in fourth-grade math when the nation as a whole saw only minor gains — can be credited to academic recovery efforts funded by federal pandemic relief, said Ray Hart, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools. Investing in efforts like intensive tutoring programs and curriculum updates is “really proving to make a difference,” he said.
Republicans in Congress were quick to cast blame on Democrats and former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Michigan, chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said the decline is “clearly a reflection of the education bureaucracy continuing to focus on woke policies rather than helping students learn and grow.”
“I’m thankful we have an administration that is looking to reverse course,” he said in a reference to President Donald Trump.
Compared with 2019 results, eighth grade reading scores are now down 8 points. Reading scores are down 5 points in both grades. And in fourth grade math, scores are down 3 points.
Yet officials say there’s reason to be optimistic. Carr highlighted improvement in Louisiana, where fourth grade reading is now back above pre-pandemic levels, and in Alabama, which accomplished that feat in fourth grade math.
Carr was especially laudatory of Louisiana, where a campaign to improve reading proficiency resulted in both higher- and lower-performing students exceeding 2019 scores.
“I would not say that hope is lost, and I would not say that we cannot turn this around,” Carr said. “It’s been demonstrated that we can.”
US children fall further behind in reading, make little improvement in math on national exam
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US children fall further behind in reading, make little improvement in math on national exam
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- The findings are yet another setback for US schools and reflect the myriad challenges that have upended education
- The national exam results also show growing inequality
A humpback whale briefly swallows kayaker in Chilean Patagonia — and it’s all captured on camera
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- While whale attacks on humans are extremely rare in Chilean waters, whale deaths from collisions with cargo ships have increased in recent years
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile: A humpback whale briefly swallowed a kayaker off Chilean Patagonia before quickly releasing him unharmed. The incident, caught on camera, quickly went viral.
Last Saturday, Adrián Simancas was kayaking with his father, Dell, in Bahía El Águila near the San Isidro Lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan when a humpback whale surfaced, engulfing Adrián and his yellow kayak for a few seconds before letting him go.
Dell, just meters (yards) away, captured the moment on video while encouraging his son to stay calm.
“Stay calm, stay calm,” he can be heard saying after his son was released from the whale’s mouth.
“I thought I was dead,” Adrián told The Associated Press. “I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me.”
He described the “terror” of those few seconds and explained that his real fear set in only after resurfacing, fearing that the huge animal would hurt his father or that he would perish in the frigid waters.
Despite the terrifying experience, Dell remained focused, filming and reassuring his son while grappling with his own worry.
“When I came up and started floating, I was scared that something might happen to my father too, that we wouldn’t reach the shore in time, or that I would get hypothermia,” Adrián said.
After a few seconds in the water, Adrián managed to reach his father’s kayak and was quickly assisted. Despite the scare, both returned to shore uninjured.
Located about 1,600 miles (3,000 kilometers) south of Santiago, Chile’s capital, the Strait of Magellan is a major tourist attraction in the Chilean Patagonia, known for adventure activities.
Its frigid waters pose a challenge for sailors, swimmers and explorers who attempt to cross it in different ways.
Although it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere, temperatures in the region remain cool, with minimums dropping to 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) and highs rarely exceeding 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius.)
While whale attacks on humans are extremely rare in Chilean waters, whale deaths from collisions with cargo ships have increased in recent years, and strandings have become a recurring issue in the last decade.
Ukranians mark Valentine's Day with tears
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- "I gave this book to him as a wedding anniversary present. A month later, he was gone," Natalia said through her tears as she gazed at the tombstone
- Vassyl was a writer, a lover of literature. As he did not have time to enjoy her latest present, Natalia brought it with her to the cemetery, "to read it to him"
LVIV: All Natalia has for Valentine's Day is the grave of her husband, Vassyl, a Ukrainian soldier killed at the front and now buried in the western city of Lviv.
That and a purple book of poems she clutches tightly in her hands.
"I gave this book to him as a wedding anniversary present. A month later, he was gone," Natalia said through her tears as she gazed at the tombstone.
Natalia and Vassyl spent 21 years of their lives together. They had three children, the youngest of whom is just six.
Vassyl was a writer, a lover of literature. As he did not have time to enjoy her latest present, Natalia brought it with her to the cemetery, "to read it to him".
Swaddled in a black puffer jacket, her eyes red with emotion, Natalia recited "So no one has loved," a poem she had learned by heart.
Between the pages of the poetry book she had slipped the dried petals of a yellow rose, the same colour as the roses on Vassyl's grave.
Natalia was not the only soldier's widow at the cemetery in western Ukraine on Friday, where the tombstones were decorated with red heart-shaped balloons, cuddly toys and the yellow and blue national flag.
Maria lost her husband, Andrey, on Christmas Eve last year.
They had never celebrated Valentine's Day, she said, calling it "just a marketing ploy".
"But I don't know. Today I wanted to come," she said.
"It's all very painful. And unfair, really," she added. "Instead of having a good, beautiful life, like we had before this war, now you only have a grave in the cemetery and that's it."
Another widow, also called Natalia, was busy pinning a little heart to the flowers on the grave of her spouse, who was killed when a drone hit his car.
"I can't get used to the fact that he is no more, that I will never hear him again, never see him again," she said.
"My husband loved me very much. He always called me constantly. He loved me. He would have congratulated me today too, if he were alive."
On the other side of the country in Kramatorsk, at the heart of the fighting in the eastern region of Donetsk, 30-year-old combat medic Yaroslav was preparing Thursday to spend a third Valentine's Day in a row without his wife.
Despite the distance, he has resolved to keep the faith. "Let it be a holiday. That's it. War is war. there will always be hard times," he said.
He showed AFP the goodies in his khaki bag -- macaroons oozing with chocolate sent to him by his spouse, who knew they were his favourite treat.
He and his comrades had sent back flowers and sweets by post or courier.
Yaroslav has not seen his wife for three months, and would probably have to wait another three.
"I feel sad to leave her. It is sad to come back here," he said quietly, lowering his bright blue eyes.
If they had been together on Valentine's Day, "I think we wouldn't talk. We would just be hugging."
A little way off, Olga Volodiuk, a florist, waited for the lovers who did not turn up.
"The market is empty," Volodiuk said, wrapping herself tightly in her pink puffer jacket.
She blamed the increasing attacks on Kramatorsk, a major army base near one of the few remaining cities in the east under Ukrainian control.
The shops were full of cuddly bears and coloured decorations for Valentine's Day but this year there were fewer customers, Volodiuk said.
"There were explosions today," she said. "There is no line to buy bread so to buy flowers, even less so."
First astronaut with a disability cleared for space station mission
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- The first-ever astronaut with a physical disability has been cleared for a mission onboard the International Space Station, the European Space Agency announced on Friday
PARIS:The first-ever astronaut with a physical disability has been cleared for a mission onboard the International Space Station, the European Space Agency announced on Friday.
John McFall, a 43-year-old British surgeon and former Paralympian who lost a leg in a motorbike accident when he was 19, said he was “hugely proud” of clearing the hurdle.
Since announcing McFall as a member of its astronaut reserve in 2022, the European Space Agency (ESA) has been assessing the feasibility of someone with a prosthesis becoming a crew member on a space mission.
On Friday, the ESA announced that McFall had received medical clearance for a long-duration mission onboard the International Space Station (ISS).
McFall emphasized that he was “relatively passive” in the process, and just had to be medically healthy and carry out the required tasks.
“This is way bigger than me — this is a cultural shift,” he told an online press conference.
There is no date yet for when McFall will get his chance to become what the ESA has dubbed the first “parastronaut.”
“Now he’s an astronaut like everybody else who wants to fly to the space station, waiting for a mission assignment,” the ESA’s director of human and robotic exploration Daniel Neuenschwander said.
The ESA’s announcement comes as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have come under attack from the new US administration of Donald Trump.
“We are now entering a world which is changing a bit from a DEI perspective from one of our partners of the International Space Station,” Neuenschwander said.
“We will continue with our European values,” he emphasized, adding that all ISS partners — which includes the United States — had given McFall medical clearance.
The next phase of the feasibility study will look at some of the hardware needed, including prosthetics, so that McFall can best overcome any additional challenges in space.
McFall said that technologies they are working on “are going to trickle down and have benefits for prosthetic users in wider society as well.”
A$AP Rocky trial begins closing arguments and Rihanna comes to court with their toddler sons
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“Was it a real gun or was it a fake gun?” Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec said. “Nothing else is in dispute.”
The prosecutor said the hip-hop star fired at a former friend on a Hollywood street in 2021 and argued that Rocky was simply and undeniably guilty of two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
The defense, whose closing argument began Thursday afternoon, says the gun was a prop that fires only blanks and that Rocky took it from a music video set for security.
Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said the accuser, who is the key witness, is “an angry pathological liar” who “committed perjury again and again and again and again.”
Rocky, the Grammy-nominated music star, fashion mogul and actor whose legal name is Rakim Athelaston Mayers, is the longtime partner of the singing superstar Rihanna, who has attended the trial sporadically. For the first time, she brought the two sons they have together — 2-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and 1-year-old Riot Rose Mayers — entering the courtroom quietly but dramatically a few minutes into the prosecutor’s presentation.
The boys, wearing suits, could be heard cooing as a prosecutor talked. Rihanna held one on her lap and tried to keep him quiet with a toy. During a break, Rocky walked down the hall, past jurors, holding the younger boy. Rihanna returned to court after the lunch break without the children.
Jurors will likely begin deliberating on Friday. Rocky could get up to 24 years in prison if convicted.
The jurors are not supposed to be aware of the possible sentence. But during testimony, Rocky’s tour manager, Lou Levin, said, “I read that he was facing 24 years,” after a prosecutor hounded him about whether he wanted to see his friend and sometime boss convicted.
The judge told the jury to disregard the statement. In his closing, Przelomiec said it was intentional.
“It’s interesting that Lou blurts that out when he’s not asked a question about that,” he said. “That’s clear evidence that Lou is trying to get out information to you that he thinks is prejudicial.”
Testimony ended Tuesday, when Rocky and his lawyers told a judge he would not take the stand.
The prosecution’s case rests largely on the credibility of the man Rocky is alleged to have fired on. A$AP Relli, whose legal name is Terell Ephron, became friends with Rocky in high school in New York. Both were members of a crew of creative types called the A$AP Mob.
Their friendship continued after Rocky gained global fame with No. 1 albums in 2012 and 2013, but by Nov. 6, 2021, their bond had become a beef.
They met up outside a Hollywood hotel, and scuffled once they saw each other. In a second confrontation moments later, Rocky fired the shots. Relli said his knuckles were grazed by one of them.
A$AP Twelvyy, who was with Rocky, testified that Relli was the aggressor, and that Rocky fired the shots as a warning to stop him from attacking another member of their crew.
Twelvyy testified that Rocky fired blanks from the prop gun that the rapper had been carrying for security for months, and that everyone involved knew it. Levin testified to the same. Both were clearly coached and coordinated, Przelomiec said.
“What they got on the stand and told you were lies,” he told jurors.
Neither side produced a gun as evidence. Despite more than three years passing, the defense didn’t say the gun was fake until the beginning of trial, which Przelomiec said “defies all reason.”
“There is literally no evidence of a prop gun,” the prosecutor said.
Tacopina countered that “there’s definitely a lot less evidence of a real gun.”
Relli also sued Rocky, and Rocky’s attorneys are casting him as a jealous opportunist. In text messages and in phone calls recorded by a mutual friend, Relli said he was going to take Rocky for millions.
Relli testified the calls were faked, but the prosecution played long excerpts during closings to point out that what Relli said on them was “exactly what he told you here in court.”
“Mr. Ephron wants to get paid,” Przelomiec said, “because he was the victim of a real crime by a real gun.”
Tacopina said the prosecution didn’t remotely prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“They have not met their burden here,” he said. “Not even close. Because they can’t.”
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs sues NBC over new documentary as he awaits trial on sex trafficking charges
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- The lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York state court
- The documentary premiered last month on Peacock TV, the network’s streaming service.
NEW YORK: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is suing NBC Universal over a documentary that he says falsely accuses him of being a serial murderer who had sex with underage girls as he awaits trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York state court says the documentary, ” Diddy: Making of a Bad Boy,” included statements that NBC Universal either knew were false or published with reckless disregard for the truth in order to defame the founder of Bad Boy Records.
“Indeed, the entire premise of the Documentary assumes that Mr. Combs has committed numerous heinous crimes, including serial murder, rape of minors, and sex trafficking of minors, and attempts to crudely psychologize him,” the complaint reads. “It maliciously and baselessly jumps to the conclusion that Mr. Combs is a ‘monster’ and ‘an embodiment of Lucifer’ with ‘a lot of similarities’ to Jeffrey Epstein.”
Spokespersons for NBC Universal and the entertainment company that produced the documentary, which is also named in the suit, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment. The documentary premiered last month on Peacock TV, the network’s streaming service.
“From his childhood to becoming a mogul, this raw look at Sean Combs’ journey through exclusive footage and candid interviews explores his rise, controversies and the man behind the music,” a description of the documentary on Peacock’s website reads.
Combs, who is seeking no less than $100 million in damages, has been in Brooklyn federal prison since his September arrest on racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges.
Federal prosecutors say he used his wealth and influence to coerce female victims and male sex workers into drug-fueled, dayslong sexual performances known as “Freak Offs.”
They say Combs used blackmail and violence to intimidate and threaten his victims in a pattern of abuse that goes back to the early 2000s.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His trial is slated to start in May.
Erica Wolff, an attorney for Combs, said NBC and the other entities named in the suit “maliciously and recklessly broadcast outrageous lies” in order to “line their own pockets” by driving viewership to the documentary.
“In making and broadcasting these falsehoods, among others, Defendants seek only to capitalize on the public’s appetite for scandal without any regard for the truth and at the expense of Mr. Combs’s right to a fair trial,” she said in a statement. “Mr. Combs brings this lawsuit to hold Defendants accountable for the extraordinary damage their reckless statements have caused.”
Combs’ lawsuit says the documentary “falsely, recklessly, and maliciously” accuses him of murdering Kimberly Porter, Christopher Wallace and Dwight Arrington Myers, among other notable names.
Porter, a model who had been Combs’ longtime girlfriend and the mother of some of his children, died in 2008 at the age of 47 from complications from pneumonia.
Wallace, the rapper known as The Notorious B.I.G., was killed in 1997 in a still-unsolved drive-by shooting in Los Angeles at age 24.
Myers, the rapper known as “Heavy D,” died from a pulmonary embolism in 2011 at the age of 44.
“It shamelessly advances conspiracy theories that lack any foundation in reality, repeatedly insinuating that Mr. Combs is a serial killer because it cannot be a ‘coincidence’ that multiple people in Mr. Combs’s orbit have died,” the complaint reads.
Elsewhere, the complaint says the documentary delved into claims Combs had sex with underage girls, citing as evidence a civil complaint that’s been “thoroughly discredited.” Combs’ lawyers say the women referenced in that complaint have since confirmed they were adults at the time.