Data from an annual Kids Count in Michigan Data Book is illustrating the impact Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic edicts has had on students learning to read in the Great Lakes State.
“In Michigan, we look at all the counties and the cities, and every year, we produce a data report showing kind of trends in child well-being, how they’re faring, what’s improved, what’s gotten worse over time,” Kids Count Michigan Director Anne Kuhnem told WXMI.
The analysis, produced annually since 1992 in conjunction with the Michigan League for Public Policy, looks at 20 different indicators involving education, health and safety, family and community, and economic security to document trends over time.
Go Ad-Free, Get Content, Go Premium Today - $1 Trial
While many have improved from 2022 or 2023 to 2017, key measures of student success in education have trended in the opposite direction.
The percentage of third graders who are proficient at reading declined from 44.1% in 2017 to 42.1% in 2022. That’s a bad sign for future educational development, as research has found that third graders who lack reading proficiency are four times more likely to become high school dropouts.
A study of 26,000 Chicago Public Schools students also showed “students who read above grade level in the third grade enrolled in college at higher rates than their peers who read at or below grade level.” More than half of students who could not read at grade level by third grade graduated high school, according to Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.
“All too often we hear stories of students who struggle through to third grade and find themselves the following year in the ‘fourth grade slump,’ as the focus for instruction changes from ‘learning to read literary and informational text’ to ‘reading to learn content,’” according to the International Dyslexia Association. “While the more skilled readers in the class learn knowledge and new words from context, poor readers, out of frustration, begin to avoid reading.”
Go Ad-Free, Get Content, Go Premium Today - $1 Trial
That creates a “vicious cycle” that begets more frustrations that extend into other subjects, from science, to social studies, to math, the association reports.
Other concerning statistics from the Data Book include the percentage of 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool dropping from 47.1% in 2017 to 44.3% in 2022.
The reading problems have worsened despite more than $5 billion in federal funds Michigan received to help schools address learning loss during the pandemic, which research analyzed by The New York Times correlates with the amount of time schools were closed to in-person learning.
In Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer banned in-person learning from March 16, 2020 to January 2021, one of the longest closures among states, fourth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress went from 32nd in the nation in 2019 to 43rd in 2022.
“Today, there is broad acknowledgement among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting,” according to the Times.
Reading, however, is among several educational issues created by the pandemic era lockdowns, with others including high student absenteeism rates and mental health issues that persist four years later.
A recent analysis by The Detroit News and The Associated Press found Michigan had the seventh highest student absenteeism rate among states during the 2022-23 school year, with 30.8% of K-12 students missing 10% or more of the school year.
While that figure has declined significantly from the year prior, it remains 5% above the national rate and more than 10 percentage points higher than the 19.7% chronic absenteeism rate in the 2018-19 school year – the year Whitmer took office.
The reasons why are largely tied to students’ home life, with many experiencing poverty, physical and mental health issues, and homelessness, according to The News.
Other research suggests many of the mental health issues keeping kids from school now were exacerbated by more screen time, less physical activity, and stress during pandemic school closures.
Yet instead of focusing more resources on addressing student mental health, Democrats who control the Michigan Legislature opted instead to cut more than $300 million from student mental health and school safety funding in the record $82.5 billion budget Whitmer signed into law in July.