9-year-olds are getting better at math, but teens are still lost
Some surprisingly decent news from the classroom: American nine-year-olds are finally clawing their way back in reading and math, proving they might actually survive the aftermath of Zoom school.
After years of depressing test scores that made everyone wonder if we'd forgotten how to read, the elementary school crowd is showing real signs of life. The latest data shows nine-year-olds are actually making progress in math and reading, somehow escaping the worst of the pandemic-era academic slump.
Maybe they were just too young to understand how depressing 2020 was, or maybe they just really love scratch-and-sniff stickers. Either way, the little kids are doing alright.
But then we look at the thirteen-year-olds, and the vibe immediately sours. For the young teens, it is a completely different story. Middle schoolers are still lagging behind, proving that trying to teach algebra to a hormonal seventh-grader over a laggy Google Meet call was a trauma from which they may never fully recover.
It turns out the only thing harder than learning fractions is learning them while going through puberty during a global lockdown.
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