Brownsville, Texas – It is almost 5 p.m. on Friday, and Dolores S. Perez works hard at the Brownsville Public Library. She is also one of the people who have the most fun.
Perez, known as Mme D of her students, is sitting at a table with one of the young students whom she tutors the tutors as they applaud and sing as part of their lesson. The retired public school teacher stands out in a burned orange sweater, his curly hair decorated with a soft brown beret.
Perez began in tutoring the students when the COVVI-19 vaccine has made it possible to meet in person. This started as a part -time concert for a few students in 2021 it has been custody six days a week.
Regarding the youngest students than tutors, those from kindergarten to the fourth year, Perez says they all need help for reading.
It is not their fault, she says, or the fault of schools or even their parents. This is just what happened during the first days of the pandemic, when the children were stuck at home and radiated in the school through a computer.
“There is nothing like individual interaction with a human being,” explains Perez. “In the zoom class, you are just a little blow on the screen.”
Perez is likely to remain occupied in the foreseeable future, if new federal data on the performance of reading students are an indicator.
The 2024 results of the country's bulletin, Released last week By the National Center for Education Statistics, show that for the third consecutive time, the reading scores of the fourth and eighth year have dropped on the biannual evaluation. The only score that exceeded the 2019 results was the performance of Louisiana in fourth year reading.
The commissioner of the ONCS, Peggy Carr, called the trend “which gives to think” during a town hall on the results in Washington, DC
“The story of reading is discouraging, continuous declines that started before the pandemic,” said Carr. “The average scores are at the same level as 30 years ago. Students are not where we need or we want them to be. “
Read by figures
The average reading scores fell by two points for the students of the fourth and eighth in 2024, respectively at 215 and 258. It is down compared to a fourth year summit of 223 in 2015 and an eighth year summit of 268 in 2013.
Carr drew attention to the expansion of gaps between the highest and lowest replacement – the scores fall the fastest among the students who are most struggling.
Average reading scores of students from the fourth and eighth year to 90th centile were not statistically different from 2022 to 2024, and the scores among the high leaflets in the two notes have been maintained quite stable in the last three decades.
The fourth -year reading average among students in the 10th lower hundreds fell by four points to 158, or 17 points lower than their best year in 2009.
Students of the eighth year of the 10th lower clock have seen their average score drop from five points to 204, the lowest score since 1992 and 19 points lower than their best average.
The percentage of students who do not reach the level of basic NAEP success increases. At the basic level, fourth year students are capable of demonstrate skills As use the context to glean the meaning of words and identify a problem described in a passage. Eighth students should also be able to formulate an opinion based on text and use details to answer specific questions.
Among the fourth year students nationwide, 40% failed to reach the basic reading skills of NAEP. This proportion was even more important for certain groups when they are broken down by the race, representing more than half of the Hispanic, black and American students of the Indian or Alaska.
Among all the eighth year students, 33% failed to reach the basic reading competence. The failure rate among Hispanic, Black and Aboriginal students was higher by more than 10 percentage points.
Before and after
Perez students come from all horizons and schools, whether public, private, charter or at home.
The third and fourth year that Perez Tutors have now been in kindergarten or kindergarten when the country's schools became far away due to the pandemic. These first school years are a critical time For students to acquire social skills, self -regulation and generally how to work in a class.
Students also redevelop the work ethics necessary to do well at school, says Perez. Although she did not teach during the pandemic, she saw friends and family fight to reproduce how teachers motivate students to work.
“How would you notify a child who is sitting behind a computer?” Said Perez. “Here and there, they got out of it with just presenting themselves, and you get credit. Everyone has obtained an abridged version of learning.”
Perez says that her third and fourth year students quickly catch up on individual support, where she is able to adapt each lesson to their personal interests depending on whether students are history lovers or go crazy about dinosaurs. But its tutoring services brand is not something to which all children have access.
“Some parents have the means to get help, but I think of all the children whose parents do not do it,” explains Perez. “They are more late, and it's a large population. You need to read for almost everything in the world, in all other subjects. This affects all aspects of their learning to be behind.”
Students of first and second year generally come to Perez read at a kindergarten level, she says, and Perez works with them on skills such as learning the basic letter sounds, how to link words to make sentences and be able to answer: “What did you read?”
About a quarter of kindergarten through second -year students, tutors are in double -language programs in English and Spanish. These learners in English have additional challenges, says Perez, when you learn to read and write in two languages with alphabets and overlapping sounds.
“For the little CamimitosEverything is muddy, it's a single language, ”she says.
Perez offers an example: she could ask a student to write a sentence like: “See the boy”. A child who grew up by speaking Spanish at home can write “if”, using the letter that makes the long e in Spanish. Perez will remind them that the twins create the sound of vowel in “See”, which makes sense until it is time to spell a word as “happy”.
“It looks like” EE “, but it is a” y “”, Perez must explain.
“And they ask me,” Why? ” “, She laughs. “It becomes funny for them, but this is where they have to make the dissection between the two languages. If you have never untangled a thin golden chain, that's what it looks like.”
Early investment (childhood)
Steven Barnett, Founder and main co -director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, says that the results of the NAEP reading are not what someone wanted to see.
“In particular because, for a while, we had made such good progress,” he said, “and to see the scores continue to decrease after the efforts were made to try to compensate for the impacts of the pandemic, I think, is particularly disappointing.”
The federal government has channeled millions of dollars in schools until recently, in the hope of turning the tendency of scores down and keeping students at the school level.
Barnett says that there is another solution, although with a high price, which can help strengthen students' performance – high -quality pre -K programming with small classes and higher education talents.
He underlines the success of his realization New Jersey pre-k system For areas with high pauses of the state. Data show that children who started the pre-program at the age of 3 marked better on standardized eighth year tests than the cohorts of around 10 points. This would compensate more than the NAEP Backslide Reading recorded between 2022 and 2024, maintains Barnett.
“It's not a simple or cheap solution,” he says. “It's almost like adding two more schools in terms of cost for the system, but it shows that we could run things. You look during this period when our NAEP scores have decreased, and there was almost no change in the number of children who go to preschool school, much less high quality preheated. ”
The preschool is also vital at a time when parents' commitment decreases, says Barnett, with fewer parents saying that they read at home with their children in the past five years. Pre-K programs have founded bases for reading children, writing and social skills, he adds-this is where young children develop their vocabulary and learn to be part of a classroom.
“Focusing on something on which someone else wants you to concentrate, like a teacher is a skill that you must develop,” explains Barnett. “When you talk to children's teachers, one of the biggest problems is that children do not have these skills, they don't have their language. The next cohorts coming on Neap have had them at a lower level, so I expect them to do even worse unless we do something to overthrow this. ”
