MAJOR REPORT: Extreme Pandemic Policies Have Set U.S. Students’ Math And Reading Levels Back TWO DECADES -- Sadly, Yet Predictably, 'Black students saw a particularly sharp drop'

     

Math and reading scores plummet on national test, erasing 20 years of progress

Kalyn Belsha | CHALKBEAT

In a grim sign of the pandemic’s impact, math and reading scores for 9-year-olds across the U.S. plummeted between 2020 and 2022.

The declines erase decades of academic progress. In two years, reading scores on a key national test dropped more sharply than they have in over 30 years, and math scores fell for the first time since the test began in the early 1970s.

Another Honor for Our ‘Hidden Figures’: Congressional Gold Medals Given to the Black Women Behind the Space Race

Maiysha Kai | THE GLOW UP

America’s “Hidden Figures”—the black women behind NASA’s success in the “Space Race,” continue to be celebrated 50 years after their calculations helped man walk on the moon.

Thanks to the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act, NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, computer programmer Dorothy Vaughan, and engineers Mary Jackson and Christine Darden are being awarded Congressional Gold Medals, the highest civilian award in the United States. The bipartisan bill (pdf), introduced by Senator and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), among others, was signed into law by President Donald Trump on Friday.