This year’s standardized test scores for public school students came with the usual caveats from the state Department of Education to not consider them as being definitive.

There is little doubt, however, that the scores at least illustrate the awful impact of the COVID-19 pandemic — now affecting at least parts of three consecutive school years.

Statewide, proficiency declined by 8.9% in English language arts, 22.6% in math and 6.2% in science. Grades 3 through 8 test in English language arts and math, and grades 4 and 8 test in science.

The state DOE canceled the tests in 2020 because of pandemic lockdowns, and gave districts the option last year of administering the tests in the spring or fall. The DOEwill not use the 2021 test results for formal district evaluations.

Standardized tests are controversial even in normal times, simply because students themselves are not standardized. They all have different backgrounds and aptitudes and respond to different types of instruction, and they have a wide range of ability in dealing with the tests themselves.

All of that, however, does not render these tests meaningless. It would be folly to believe that vast disruptions did not adversely affect students’ learning across more than two years. The tests might not be precise, but they are indicative.

The public school funding model depends upon moving students through the system to graduation, and it is clear that the state government does a poor funding job even when not faced with a public health crisis. It funds a lower percentage of public education than more than 40 other states, about 36%, and its distribution of that money is inequitable. The Scranton School District alone would receive more than $30 million more every year, for example, if the state distributed all of its education funding according to its own “fair-funding formula.”

So making up for lost time is an extremely heavy lift. But the DOE should devise a program to help kids make up for what the pandemic took from them, and legislators should fund it with some of the billions of federal pandemic recovery funds that they have put in the bank.

— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre (TNS)