Although California students performed better than most other states in the nation from 2019-22 in math and English, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to impact student achievement overall and across all student groups, according to data released Monday, Oct. 24, by the state Department of Education.
To prevent the spread of the virus before development and widespread distribution of vaccines, most students learned from home for most of 2020-21 and returned to campuses in the spring either full-time or with hybrid — in-class and remote — instruction.
The lack of in-class instruction is being blamed for significant drops in performance compared to the year before the pandemic. CDE data shows that two out of three students in the state did not meet math standards, and more than half did not meet English standards on testing completed in the spring.
However, a comparison with results from previous English and mathematics assessments suggests that recovery may already be underway, according to the department. But a majority of Black, Latino and low-income students did not meet state standards for math this year, reporting showed. Since 2021, California has invested $4.4 billion one-time and $4 billion ongoing in state funds in expanding learning opportunities beyond traditional school hours and $7.9 billion in the Learning Recovery Block Grant to fund such programs as “high-dose” tutoring.
“Now is not the time to take our foot off the accelerator when it comes to doing everything we can to help all our students progress toward mastery of our learning standards and thrive in every way in school,” California State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond said in a statement. “California’s investments in important initiatives such as high-dose tutoring, professional development for teachers, and expanded learning time, and in such areas as mental health and wellness, are critical to lifting up academic performance across the board while supporting students’ well-being,” she said.
In his response to the new data, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the results demonstrate the importance of California’s $23.8 billion to support students during the pandemic and as they returned to the classroom, and continued educational efforts.
“California focused on keeping kids safe during the pandemic while making record investments to mitigate learning loss and transforming our education system,” Newsom said in a statement.
“While California’s students experienced less learning loss than those in most other states during the pandemic, these results are not a celebration but a call to action — students are struggling academically and we need to keep getting them the resources they need to thrive,” he said. “That’s why we’ve made record investments in education, created a new pre-K grade, implemented universal free meals, expanded before and after school programs, bolstered mental health, and more.”
Data from 2021-22 spring testing should be considered “baseline data” for measuring student progress going forward due to the challenges presented by the pandemic, according to the CDE.
In the 2019-20 school year — a year in which schools quickly pivoted to remote learning after the discovery of COVID-19 in California — the U.S. Department of Education waived all testing requirements.
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Tim Scott says
I’m glad that out local MAGAt thug chose to comment on this and start this conversation. It illustrates a critical point going into the elections. Let’s start with some facts.
1 COVID is not a crisis. It WAS a crisis. It’s now a historical event. There are still some people dying, because COVID is a disease and we are stuck with it, but the crisis; the ‘holy cow what are we going to do?’ event, the debates about ideas for how to deal with it; that’s in the past.
2 Those debates about ideas and what to do did not end in consensus. Republicans ended with much different ideas than democrats. Republican governors responded to the crisis with much different approaches based on much different ideas than Democrat governors did. We effectively had an experiment.
3 The results of that experiment are in, and they are clear.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Sort this data by the “deaths per million population” column and the results are VERY clear.
If the actions taken by Greg Abbott in Texas had gotten the results that the actions taken in California got, then there would be 18,000 more Texans alive today. If the actions taken in California, lead by Gavin Newsom, had gotten the results that actions taken in Texas got, then there would have been 24,000 more Californians dead. These aren’t ideas to debate, these are numbers; they are results. They are the recorded facts.
We DID have a debate. A massive, national debate, about how to approach the COVID crisis. When we had no consensus we had different states go different ways based on different ideas, as is their right. We can now look at the results and see that IF the goal in responding to the crisis was “save the lives of the most citizens” then the democrats definitely followed the more effective policies.
I say ‘if’ there because Republicans may want to continue the debate over whether that should have been the goal. One Republican governor claims that results in her state are the ultimate demonstration of how effective Republican policies were and calls it a triumph. Her state is sparsely populated, a great advantage. Her state is far from the coasts and gets basically zero international traffic, making it among the last to be exposed, another tremendous advantage. If California had gotten the results that her state got then there would be 35,000 more dead Californians. That’s the fact in the numbers. We can speculate that since we are not sparsely populated and our international traffic exposed us early it would even be more, but isn’t 35,000 enough?
Obviously, if saving lives of her citizens was her goal then she made some bad choices. She should take responsibility for that, and if there was some other goal; some goal that was met; some goal that justifies calling the response in her state a “triumph for Republican policy” then she should share what her goals were. She should let the people of her state decide whether achieving those goals was worth the lives lost. If her policies had had the same effects that policies followed in California got then 20% of the people who died of COVID in her state would not be dead.
Do you think the families of people who died there would trade her goals for a 20% chance of having their loved one back? We cannot find out if we don’t know what her goals were, what motivated the choices she made for her state in responding to COVID. But she is not really forthcoming on that subject.
Republican governors want to treat the COVID crisis as an ongoing debate about ideas, not an after action report on actual results. They want to speak in vague generalities like “our response was a triumph!” rather than take responsibility for the facts and say “our response killed 20% more people than responses that were guided by different ideas that we disagreed with at the time.”
Or they don’t want to talk about it at all, and just “move on.” This is understandable, because the facts indicate that they failed, badly. But shouldn’t we the people take that into account in deciding who to put in office? Isn’t it likely that there is some other crisis coming? Don’t we deserve the opportunity to pick proven winners? If the Republicans are claiming that their policies were more effective when the numbers show that their policies resulted in more deaths don’t we want to know what they are saying they were more effective at?
Tim Scott says
Beecee says
October 25, 2022 at 3:20 pm
The total amount of folks that died in blue states far exceeds the total amount of folks that died in red states.
Lemme guess, that was on Jeopardy in the “Facts MAGAts are too stupid to understand the lack of significance of” category.
For the record, the correct question is “what happens when 60% of the population lives in blue states?”
MAGAts keep reading:
LOL, a whole lot more people living in them does lead to a whole lot more people dying in them.
Do you understand yet? If you don’t I will try to simplify it further for you by asking a fourth grader how they would explain it.
Becee says
“For the record, the correct question is “what happens when 60% of the population lives in blue states?”
Ok so if there is 10% more of our population in blue states let’s do this.
Add up blue state deaths,
Add up red state deaths,
Subtract 10% of blue state deaths from total.
I’m not sure the outcome but I bet blue state deaths far surpass red state deaths even after the correction, mostly due to The death camps (nursing homes) states like Florida have a MUCH larger population of elderly and they payed attention to that population first, unlike to homie Cuomo.
Tim Scott says
Compare mortality rate in California to mortality rates in red states and get back to me.
Nevermind, you are obviously too stupid so I’ll do it for you.
Let’s use Arizona, mortality rate 4,330 per million. Apply to California population 38.5 million for 171 thousand casualties, as opposed to actual casualties of 97 thousand. 74,000 additional deaths.
Or Florida, even though DeathSantis forced his department of health to under report fatalities the mortality rate of 3,821 per million applied to California’s population would yield 147 thousand dead, 50,000 more than we had.
Or Texas, 3,159 per million, projects as 121 thousand, 24 thousand over actual deaths in California.
Anyone want to say “well we should have done what Texas did,” and then choose the 24,000 people you are saying we’d have been better off killing and explain it to their families?
Anyone want to play “name a red state that actually did well” and let me do the math for you? Hint: if you choose a red state where a significant portion of the population isn’t even accessible by roads you’ll find that they did indeed have a lower mortality rate than we did, but I will point out that their conditions are very favorable.
C. Emt says
Thank you Tim Scott for being the voice or reason. In all your posts. I usually don’t reply to Ts, they probably think they are the majority, they should think again.
Tim Scott says
Public service.
You’re welcome.
Beecee says
Chit,
When I started reading TS’s posts I was stoked…
After reading them I was like, wa wa wa waaaaaaaaaaa
Sonya says
C-Emt is Tim Cummings commenting to himself.
Prove me wrong
As he has a history of doing this.
Tim Scott says
No, I actually don’t have any such history. You and your muff buddy may need each other’s support, but I just say my piece and don’t worry who agrees or disagrees.
Sonya says
We have the receipts
Tim Scott says
Do tell. Just like how you know where to ambush me?
Tim Scott says
This by the way is why lying clowns like Sonya are so much fun. “We have the receipts” is a statement I don’t even have to call a lie, because it has no possibility of being true. Even if I was secretly posting as 40 different people, where would this loser “get receipts”? Has she hacked the AVTimes to check ISPs? No, she has not shown anything like that kind of brainpower. So once again she is so unconcerned about telling lies that she doesn’t even bother thinking about whether they even can be true.
She’s like the five year old with jam all over their face claiming “mo I didn’t take the jam,” or like her cult leader Donald Trump just spinning whoppers.
Sonya says
We have those receipts too. Thanks to the folks you bash her on the reg.
Tim Scott says
LOL…you mean the Wrecks troll farm that doxxed that name LONG before you did? They don’t know any more about finding me than you and your hit squad.
Meanwhile, here are some true statements I have made.
You not only don’t “have receipts” to back up your latest lie about me posting as C-Emt, there is no way for such receipts to exist so any thinking person KNOWS that you lied.
You and Beecee have a history of doxxing. That may not have been a sure thing when I said it, and I acknowledged that maybe you didn’t actually dox William…but you certainly proved the meat of the accusation for me.
Beecee is too stupid to calculate mortality rates. That one isn’t absolutely proven, but we can guess from the fact that she can’t even FOLLOW the calculations that she certainly isn’t likely to be able to do them. Safe to say she isn’t in book keeping or anything like that.
Am I missing anything?
Tim Scott says
LOLOLOL…I WAS missing something!!!! Went to watch the rest of the game and it dawned on me!!!
You are trying to intimidate me with the “friends on the force” play! “People I bash here on the reg,” you mean the COPS! I’m sure either you or the basic clown have used that exact phrase before…something about how I would “call the people I bash on the reg…”
So you are suggesting that some cop that you know, because you asked them for help locating someone you want your husbands to assault, illegally ran the name for you and gave you an address. Huh. Yeah, I can believe that. Corrupt scum that the LASD is plagued with being what they are.
Soooo, here’s a deal. If you make the long schlep out there say hi to the tenant for me. I’ll tell them if you either put out, or provide a copy of your ID, your choice, that they should give you my e-mail address so you can contact me. Luckily for me I’ve always been even more cautious about being ambushed by law enforcement than I am about being ambushed by angry tramps.
Sonya says
Wow, look at him go folks, I’m loving it.
Tim Scott says
Me too. Your empty MAGAt threats reveal so much about you. Things that I’ve pretty much known you are now showing to everyone else.
Beecee says
The total amount of folks that died in blue states far exceeds the total amount of folks that died in red states.
Graph that one out. And that’s not combining the loss of life to accelerated alcohol and drug abuse and loss of livelyhood from draconian lockdowns.
How about this, why don’t you or anybody try to go about proving somehow that masking and lockdowns has a positive effect on death rates.
Tim Scott says
Thanks for proving that I did need to do that for you.
Beecee says
You don’t say…
Tim Scott says
Is it your opinion that they’d be so much better off if we had just let their grandparents die, like they did in the red states?
Beecee says
No grandparents were killed in New York or California folks…..
Democrats actually ran elderly death camps (nursing homes)
Congrats.