ST. CROIX, U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) – According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which released its national 2024 KIDS COUNT© Data Book on June 10th. The failure of the U.S. to prepare our kids to learn could cost our children hundreds of billions of dollars in future earnings and the U.S. economy trillions in lost activity. The 2024 KIDS COUNT Data Book is a 50-state report of recent household data developed by Annie E. Casey Foundation analyzing how children and families are faring post-pandemic. (Note that the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) is not part of the rankings in the KIDS COUNT Data Book as it draws data from the American Community Survey, which is not conducted in the territory. The U.S. Virgin Islands is included in the KIDS COUNT © Data Center (https://datacenter.aecf.org/), which houses key data points on child well-being across the nation.) The annual report also sheds light on other challenges, including those surrounding education, health, and the economy that are affecting American children. Each year, the Data Book presents national and state data from 16 indicators in four domains — economic well-being, education, health, and family and community factors — and ranks the states according to how children are faring overall.
To supplement available national data, each year St. Croix Foundation’s KIDS COUNT USVI team publishes a Data Book (or product) focused specifically on the USVI that reports available data aligned with the four domains of the national Data Book.
In the U.S. Virgin Islands, as published in the 2023 KIDS COUNT Data Book in 2022, 42% of students enrolled at the University of the Virgin Islands were first-generation college students as compared to the national rate of 24%. While the data is specific to students at the University of the Virgin Islands, it represents a bright spot in the Virgin Islands, indicating the removal of barriers to opportunity and that our youth see higher education as a means to breaking racial inequities and cycles of poverty. According to the Education Trust, the stakes are particularly high for young Black male students: “Among those who don’t complete high school, 68 percent will be imprisoned by age 34. With a high school diploma, falls to 21 percent; with a college degree to 6 percent.”
Of course, there is still much work to be done. As reported in the national KIDS COUNT Data Book, chronic absenteeism is soaring post-pandemic with 30% of school children in the U.S. missing 10% or more days of school in 2021/2022. By comparison, in the USVI, the rate of chronic absenteeism was 31% across the territory in 2022 (36% in the St. Croix District and 26% in the St. John/St. Thomas District) according to data from the US Virgin Islands Department of Education (VIDE).
Nationally, in 2019, 33% of U.S. students met or exceeded standards in math; in 2022, only 26% of eighth graders were at or above proficient in math according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP. Trends in reading are also on the decline. Nationally less than a third of fourth graders (32%) were at or above proficient in reading in 2022, two percentage points lower than right before the pandemic (34% in 2019).
Now in its 35th year of publication, the national KIDS COUNT® Data Book focuses on students’ lack of basic reading and math skills, a problem decades in the making but brought to light by the focus on learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unprecedented drops in learning from 2019 to 2022 amounted to decades of lost progress. And while chronic absence has increased nationally, it is our most vulnerable children living in poverty who are especially unable to resume their school day routines on a regular basis. Moreover, state averages mask disparities that affect students of color, children in immigrant families and children from low-income families or attending low-income schools.
The Casey Foundation report contends that the pandemic is not the sole cause of lower test scores: Educators, researchers, policymakers and employers who track students’ academic readiness have been ringing alarm bells for a long time. U.S. scores in reading and math have barely budged in decades. Compared to peer nations, the United States is not equipping its children with the high-level reading, math and digital problem-solving skills needed for many of today’s fastest-growing occupations in a highly competitive global economy.
According to the Casey Foundation, this lack of readiness will result in major harm to the nation’s economy and to our youth as they join the workforce. Up to $31 trillion in U.S. economic activity hinges on helping young people overcome learning loss caused by the pandemic. Students who don’t advance beyond lower levels of math are more likely to be unemployed after high school. One analysis calculates the drop in math scores between 2019 and 2022 will reduce lifetime earnings by 1.6% for 48 million pandemic-era students, for a total of $900 billion in lost income.
However, some states have delayed spending their share of the $190 billion critical federal pandemic funding (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER) that could help boost achievement. The U.S. Virgin Islands was awarded over $256 million in ESSER funding, of which approximately half has been spent according to the U.S. Department of Education (https://covid-relief-data.ed.gov/profile/state/VI). The deadline to allocate – not spend – this funding is September 30, 2024. Tens of billions of dollars set aside for schools will vanish forever if states do not act immediately.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation recommends the following:
- To get children back on track, we must make sure they arrive at the classroom ready to learn by ensuring access to low- or no-cost meals, a reliable internet connection, a place to study and time with friends, teachers and counselors.
- Expand access to intensive tutoring for students who are behind in their classes and missing academic milestones. Research has shown the most effective tutoring is in person, high dosage and tied directly to the school.
- States should take advantage of all their allocated pandemic relief funding to prioritize the social, emotional, academic and physical well-being of students. As long as funds are obligated by the Sept. 30 deadline, states should have two more full years to spend them.
- States and school systems should address chronic absence, so more students return to learn. While few states gather and report chronic absence data by grade, all of them should. Improving attendance tracking and data will inform future decision-making. Lawmakers should embrace positive approaches rather than criminalizing students or parents due to attendance challenges, because they may not understand the consequences of even a few days missed.
- Policymakers should invest in community schools, public schools that provide wraparound support to children and families. Natural homes for tutoring, mental health support, nutritional aid and other services, community schools use innovative and creative programs to support young learners and encourage parent engagement, which leads to better outcomes for