I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: U.S. math scores show ‘devastating’ decline.

The declines were “steep” and “devastating,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. While high achievers held their own, low-performing students lost the most, widening achievement gaps.

“One in five U.S. eighth graders scored below the low benchmark, meaning they lacked even basic proficiency,” Meltzer writes. That’s way up from earlier years.

The drop in science scores was less extreme, but U.S. fourth-graders now score worse in science than they did in 1995.

Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan topped the rankings. Poland, Sweden and Australia made the greatest gains, passing the U.S. “We have countries leapfrogging over us,” Carr said.

It’s not clear whether school closures, which lasted longer in the U.S. than in Europe or Asia, led to more learning loss. But one of the countries that raised achievement, Sweden, didn’t close elementary schools or mandate masks.

I’m not surprised.