The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on students' learning, with test scores taking a hit across the board.
Now, a new report by the National Center for Education is showing a more troubling pattern – drops in reading and math scores.
With that, many people are turning to tutoring. Ananya Sri Raja Kaldindi, who will be a senior this fall, has been volunteering as a tutor in Detroit since she was a freshman.
"We have about 48 students. We have a lot," she said.
Her duties have quadrupled as one-on-one sessions have turned into helping four students at a time.
She also said she noticed a shift. The students are tutoring to catch up, not get ahead.
Tevfik Carter has been an educator in the U.S. for nearly a decade. The assistant principal noticed a drastic decline in students' abilities.
"Let's say you have 25 students in a particular classroom, I would say more than 50% of them are struggling with reading," He said.
The report found drops across the board in math and reading scores among 13-year-olds, with four points in reading and nine in math.
The test was given during the end of 2022, and it's a clear look at learning skills before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the same research shows the steady decline started back in 2013 with scores down seven in reading and 14 in math over the past decade.
"So not only are we seeing declines back-to-back, it’s the first two declines we have ever seen in the history of the assessment and that goes back to the early 1970s," Grady Wilburn said.
Thomas Morgan, with the Michigan Education Association, said.
According to Thomas Morgan, with the Michigan Education Association, education started taking a hit in 2011 when $1 billion was stripped from its budget.
"It’s no question that it harmed our kids," he said.
However, Morgan is hopeful the record-breaking investment the state legislature put back into schools means we are moving in the right direction.
"At the end of the day, our kids deserve to have the same opportunity that previous generations had, and that means helping them get caught up and back on track," Morgan said.
Even though school is out, educators say learning should continue. There are many programs at local libraries and non-profits like the Detroit Education Society that offer free tutoring.
