Across the nation, there is an epidemic of students falling behind in school. Student test scores are dropping at a steady rate. There is a lack of effort being put in as students are becoming increasingly burnt out as school marches throughout the year.
Not only are students becoming more burnt out, but their standardized test scores are declining as well. Throughout your academic career, you have been taking (or have already taken) standardized tests such as the NWEA, PSAT and eventually the SAT and ACT.
For 2024, the NAEP found that the reading score for 12th graders was 3 points lower than in 2019 and down 10 points from 1992 when the test was first administered. The results also show that everyone who isn’t in the 90th percentile or higher performed worse as well. The math test shows very similar results, as there was also a 3 point decline from 2019. However, the total decline from when it was first administered (2005) is less, with only a 5 point loss. Finding what exactly is causing the decline is a problem since multiple factors come into play.
Mason Hall ’29 said he believes that a possible cause could be from a lack of trying to even do schoolwork from students because of modern resources like AI.
“People use AI in school, and it doesn’t benefit anyone really because it doesn’t teach anyone anything,” Hall said. “I feel like people would become really dependent on learning themselves about the topic and just getting the answers and then do yours do.”
Other students share similar opinions with Hall. Gabriel Younan ’26 not only thinks there is definitely a lack of student engagement, but there is also a lack of teacher engagement.
“I feel like some teachers do not care as much, and they are really not teaching as well as they could,” Younan said. “Most of the time, they are not active enough in their teaching. Still, I mean, annoying teachers is not really a huge thing. Students are too lazy to do their work, or they just don’t want to do it, and that’s why they don’t get good grades.”
On the other side of the spectrum, declining student effort is also a strong cause of these falling rates. History teacher Jeffery Lopo noticed this decline happening in front of him.
“You are always going to have a few students that give pertinent effort, but I did notice a significant drop in the last few years, what that is I’m not sure,” Lopo said. “Starting just before Covid, I started to have kids who would just do no work or very little and just not seem bothered by it.”
Despite facing these struggles, the district has managed to meet expectations. According to the the data from NAEP, the state of Michigan scored slightly below average score on their assessment test.
The Executive Director of Secondary Curriculum and Programs for UCS Kim Charland said she looks forward to seeing some continued growth in the local school’s educational progress.
“I would say for the most part, we are meeting expectations, as with everything we have we have room to grow,” Charland said. “Growing in the sense of learning more about how to engage students in their learning.”
Charland added how teaching needs to shift to meet the needs of the students since learning styles have changed.
“It’s not when I was growing up, and we are still learning those things as educators,” Charland said. “And we are still growing in our profession. We’re in a good place, but we still could grow and probably just do a little bit better in our craft, and that’s with everything.”
