Sluggish growth in math scores for U.S. students began long before the pandemic, but the problem has snowballed into an education crisis. This back-to-school-season, the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms, will be documenting the enormous challenge facing our schools and highlighting examples of progress. The three-year-old Reporting Collaborative includes AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.
‘Data days’ and longer math classes: How one district is improving math scores
While the rest of the country’s schools were losing ground in math during the COVID pandemic, students in a small rural Alabama school district soared. Piedmont City schools landed in the top spot among all school districts nationwide in a comparison of math scores in 2019 and 2022. Other Alabama school districts fared well, too,…