Colleges across the country are grappling with the same problem as academic setbacks from the pandemic follow students to campus. At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents. More students are being placed into pre-college math, starting a semester or more behind for their majors, even if they get credit for the lower-level classes.
Colleges largely blame the disruptions of the pandemic, which had an outsize impact on math. Reading scores on the national test known as NAEP plummeted, but math scores fell further, by margins not seen in decades of testing. Other studies find that recovery has been slow.
My kids learned these in 6th and 7th grade. But sure, it wasn’t the classes 6-7 years before college, it was only the ones 2-3 years ago…
Yeah the timing doesn’t work out for this to be pandemic related. These students would have been struggling with basic math in the middle of high school before the pandemic even started.
I took a semester off math in college and it was a huge mistake, the year off most kids had resulted in a huge backslide. It’s also important to remember that even pre pandemic the majority of kids weren’t competent in math to start with.