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Follow CapCon on XMichigan test results show big post-COVID learning loss
Struggles in early grades signal trouble in later years
Michigan public school students recently performed below pre-pandemic levels in reading and math, according to the latest statewide standardized tests. This happened even though schools received record funds to help students recover learning losses incurred during school closures.
Students in grades three through seven performed worse on the 2023 M-STEP in both English language arts and math, compared to 2019. There are not enough data to talk about 2020 or 2021, because the state did not require schools to administer the M-STEP those years.
But we can now use the 2023 data – combined with results from previous years – to paint a more complete picture of student performance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2023 M-STEP results suggest that most students in the tested grades are not where they should be in either English or math. Third grade is a key milestone for English language arts because reading proficiently in third grade is necessary to master the more advanced subject material introduced in fourth grade. Yet third-grade ELA scores have dropped precipitously since 2019.
“Unfinished learning during the COVID and post-COVID years” is to blame for the 2023 results, said Sen. Dayna Polehanki, as quoted by Bridge Michigan. Polehanki chairs the Senate Education Committee.
Third grade students were especially hurt by the pandemic, said State Superintendent Michael Rice.
“This past year’s third graders were perhaps the most adversely affected of any age cohort,” Rice told Bridge, “as they had pandemic-influenced school years during grades kindergarten through second grade, a challenge that was particularly noticeable in reading.”
These early grades are critical to a child’s literacy development, so the focus on learning loss for young students is understandable. Performance of sixth and seventh graders in both English and math gets less attention. The share of seventh graders who scored proficient or advanced on the ELA test dropped from 43% in 2019 to 37% in 2023, a difference of six percentage points. This was the single greatest decline in the tested grades.
Sixth graders lost nearly as much as seventh graders. The share of sixth-grade students scoring proficient or better fell from 42% to 38% over the same period. Fewer than one-third of them scored proficient or advanced in the math M-STEP in 2023, with proficiency rates in both grades decreasing by about five percentage points since 2019.
The downward trend in test scores was largely the same across family income levels, suggesting that school-related factors, not family socioeconomic status, contributed most to the change in M-STEP performance.
The elementary and middle school M-STEP results predict student performance in high school and beyond. They also provide schools with key data they can use to fill gaps in students’ learning.
Unfortunately, several programs that would have helped students recover learning lost during the pandemic-era school closures were struck down by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She vetoed legislation that would have provided families with reimbursements for summer enrichment programs, tutoring grants, and scholarships to cover the cost of learning supports. If the governor had agreed to the legislation, it would have empowered parents to secure more personalized services tailored to their children’s unique needs.
Instead, the state is allocating unprecedented levels of funding to school districts in the hope they can turn things around. While the school aid budget provides some funds for tutoring, it is unlikely to be enough to meet the vast and significant learning needs of the state’s 1.4 million public school students. Under the governor’s direction, the state is also expanding access to pre-K and post-secondary programming. Doing this won’t help the school-aged kids who need help with their reading and math skills now.
Schools can better ensure students’ success by directing funds to evidence-based programs in core subject areas. They can enhance teacher quality by adhering to robust evaluation and feedback cycles. They can improve the curriculum’s alignment with state standards assessed by the M-STEP. They can provide professional development in research-based strategies for teaching reading and math.
And by partnering with parents, they are more likely to reverse the downward trend and focus on interventions that work.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
Jennifer Granholm’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad EV trip
Even NPR admits non-Teslas have a road trip problem after Energy Department staffers block charger and citizen calls 911
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm’s four-day electric vehicle road trip was designed to pitch EVs to a skeptical public. But the journey’s long charging times, a dispute with another EV driver over scarce energy resources, and finally a 911 call drove even National Public Radio to voice doubts about electric vehicles — at least the ones made in the state Granholm used to govern.
Granholm took NPR reporter Camila Domonoske along for the ride from Charlotte to Memphis. The purpose of the trip was to promote the practical value of the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Domonoske explains:
From Lansing to Washington, political leaders are spending public money in the belief that the electric vehicle is the future. In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants two million EVs on the road by 2030 — up from about 37,000 in 2022. Granholm, a former Michigan governor, believes the U.S. military should be all-electric by 2030.
“Things are happening fast,” Granholm told town hall attendees in South Carolina, asking the audience to imagine the growth of the industry.
“You are in the center of it,” she said. “Imagine how big clean energy industries will be in 13 years. How much stronger our economy is going to grow. How many good-paying jobs we’re going to create — and where we are going to lead the world.”
Domonoske claims without elaboration that Granholm “helped rescue the auto industry during the 2008 global financial crisis” and is “in many ways the perfect person to help pitch the United States’ ambitious shift to EVs.”
But on the way from Charlotte to Memphis, reality interrupted the pitch. And the police were called:
Gas engines outnumbered EVs 100-to-1 in 2022, per U.S. Department of Energy data. Yet in the funhouse mirror of NPR, a gas-powered vehicle is deemed “nonelectric.”
Electric vehicles take a long time to charge, even in the best of circumstances.
A family with a baby, in need of the blocked spot, objected to the Energy Department’s misuse of energy infrastructure and public vehicles. The parents called 911. The cops came but decided they couldn’t do anything about a gas vehicle taking an EV spot. There was no legal recourse, just an annoyance, courtesy of America’s secretary of energy.
“Energy Department staff scrambled to smooth over the situation, including sending other vehicles to slower chargers, until both the frustrated family and the secretary had room to charge,” Domonoske reports. But the bottom line is that a U.S. energy secretary with a caravan of EVs and an advance team couldn’t make a long trip work without the cops getting involved.
Domonoske, an auto reviewer and EV owner, doesn’t give up the pitch for electric vehicles, instead resorting to a strange comparison: “[A]t home, charging an EV is much easier (not to mention cheaper) than fueling up with gasoline; you just plug in overnight, and you’re good to go every morning.”
People don’t have gas pumps at home, of course. They fill up the night before or in the morning, and those fill-ups take less time than charging an EV. None of that context made it into the story.
With a vague assurance to listeners that Top Men are working on the problem, Domonoske gives up on painting a pretty picture of Granholm’s road trip.
“Riding along with Granholm, I came away with a major takeaway,” Domonoske writes. “EVs that aren’t Teslas have a road trip problem, and the White House knows it’s urgent to solve this issue.”
James David Dickson is managing editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential. Email him at dickson@mackinac.org.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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