An analysis of new TCAP data shows the academic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students at all grade levels in all districts, but a closer look also reveals deeper problems.

District-level results, released Wed. Aug, 11, point out weaknesses worsened by pandemic-induced learning disruptions — as well as the disparities between Shelby County Schools and wealthier municipal districts. 

SCS test scores show historic learning loss

“While the pandemic has undoubtedly had a significant impact on learning loss, the reality is our system was broken well before 2020,” the Memphis Education Fund said in a statement. “This is the ideal opportunity to demand and support change. In Memphis and Shelby County, we have unprecedented federal and state resources, motivated business and community leaders and children and families who cannot afford for us to wait any longer.”

Evident on both the state and district level were learning gaps that left behind students who are Black, impoverished or diagnosed with learning disabilities. 

Local suburban districts regress in TCAP scores

“What we need to look at when we’re trying to ensure that all of our students have opportunity in the long term, is that when those students see declines like we’ve seen as a result of the pandemic, it is going to be harder to catch those students up because that’s what we traditionally see,” state Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said in a press conference on the state-level results last week. 

Here are some points to note about SCS’ test results and how they stack up to the rest of the county. 

While all seven Shelby County districts’ performance was lower than in the 2018-2019 school year, the gaps between SCS and its neighboring municipal districts have widened in most cases. 

All districts in Shelby County experienced a decline in the percentage of students meeting the state’s expectations for their grade level. In 2019, Shelby County Schools had the lowest numbers among the seven districts in the county, and that’s still true.

However, the data from 2021 shows wider gaps between the percentages of students on grade level in SCS and in the municipal districts. In math proficiency at all grade levels, the difference grew larger between SCS and all municipal districts except Millington Municipal Schools. Millington had a larger drop and as a result, drew closer to SCS’ performance. 

The difference in ELA is not as clear cut. Math was a problem point for districts across the state but ELA, while still showing a decrease, did not suffer as much. The differences between SCS and the six municipal districts hovered around the same as in the 2018-2019 school year, showing changes by only a few percentage points.

The distance between SCS and Bartlett, Lakeland and Millington school districts closed in by two to four percentage points. The others pulled away slightly, with the gap between SCS and Arlington showing the biggest growth of seven percentage points. 

Students in lower grades suffered the biggest impact.

Of the students in third through eighth grade who participated in TCAP testing, the biggest difference in performance was at the elementary level. 

SCS’ third- through fifth-graders overall proficiency in English and Math showed a 17 percentage-point drop in the 2020-2021 school year, compared to about 10 percentage points in middle school. Though ninth- through twelfth-graders do not take TCAP, the district reported the change in proficiency through their results on end-of-course testing for subjects such as English and algebra. The difference in performance in high schoolers between the 2018-2019 and 2020-2021 school years was 5.6 percentage points. 

Third-grade literacy, a focal point that the state spotlighted as “an indicator of future academic success,” took a big hit. About 14% of SCS’ third-graders met the state’s expectations of proficiency. That number had hovered around 25% in recent years. 

SCS and Millington both performed lower than the state average in third-grade ELA. The rest of the municipal districts in Shelby County performed at higher levels than the state average, as they had previously.

Students lost the most proficiency in math.

Math was a problem point across all grade levels. Both the district and the state department of education said they projected math showing the biggest decline. In SCS, just over 7% of students tested on grade level in math. 

The state’s report on TCAP district-level results spotlighted seventh grade math, which it states is “foundational to Algebra and mathematical reasoning.” In Shelby County Schools, 5.7% of seventh-graders met grade level expectations in math.

Black students and those considered economically disadvantaged, which are two demographics that encapsulate a majority of the district’s students, fared even worse. According to the data, 3.5% of Black seventh-graders and 2.6% of economically disadvantaged seventh-graders performed on grade level.