Teachers sound alarm on students failing to meet grade level standards: ‘Never seen anything like it’
One seventh grade teacher said his students are still performing at a fourth grade level
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Teachers across the United States are sounding the alarm over the current state of American education and claiming that students are being pushed to the next grade level without meeting academic standards.
In a now-viral TikTok, Marquis Bryant said he has been teaching for three years in Atlanta, Georgia, and questioned why nobody around him was worried about kids falling behind in school.
"We all know that the world is behind, like you know, globally, like because of the pandemic and stuff, but I don't know why they're not stressing to ya'll how bad it is," Bryant said. "I teach seventh grade—they are still performing on a fourth-grade level."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Many of the students in Bryant's class, he said, are "well behind where they should be." They cannot do basic computations such as adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.
Nation's report card 2022. (Fox News)
"They don't know that ascend means go up, descend means go down. They don't know that quotient means divide. They don't know evaluate the expression because I solved just the problem," he added.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Following the COVID-19 pandemic, math scores saw their largest decreases ever, while reading scores dropped to levels not seen since 1992 for fourth and eighth graders across the country, according to the Nation's Report Card.
The average mathematics score for fourth-grade students fell five points from 2019 to 2022. The score for eighth-graders dropped eight points. Reading for both grades fell three points since 2019.
Math scores were worst among eighth graders, with 38% earning scores deemed "below basic" — a cutoff that measures, for example, whether students can find the third angle of a triangle if they're given the other two.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}TEST SCORES IN CIVICS, HISTORY DECLINE FOR STUDENTS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES FOLLOWING THE PANDEMIC
A Fox News poll on gender and citizenship in education. (Fox News)
After Bryant made his concerns known online, teachers nationwide began to respond.
"It felt like a relief that a teacher was actually speaking about it in a public forum," Enfield, Connecticut teacher Angelique Schoorens told CNN.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Schoorens, who teaches seventh grade, said the skills deficits among children are so significant that educators are unable to function in terms of teaching to the standards for the grade level.
One teacher on TikTok said her students frequently fail to properly read, decode, have no vocabulary and no background knowledge.
TEACHERS' UNION HEAD SILENT OVER LATEST US TEST SCORES SHOWING TROUBLING DECLINE IN MATH, READING
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The average mathematics score for fourth-grade students fell five points from 2019 to 2022. (iStock)
"I've never seen anything like it," she added.
San Diego, California, middle school teacher Sarah Shemirani suggested that some issues with students' educations stem from parents' indifference when kids get poor grades.
"The want to do well has been dwindling and then COVID happened and it was like—now there is zero care or like the idea of—failing is just an option and if you fail, it's going to be okay," she said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Bryant said one of the most significant issues is how kids are promoted to new grade levels that they need more time to be ready for and many should have been held back if it is obvious they are performing at a lower educational plane.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Fox News' Joshua Q. Nelson contributed to this report.