‘We Kept Schools Open’: DeSantis Celebrates Florida’s Historic NAEP Test Scores

TALLAHASSEE (FLV) – The DeSantis Administration said new test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that the governor’s choice to keep kids in schools throughout the pandemic was the right call.

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the results which demonstrate that keeping kids in school throughout 2020 and 2021 has put Florida students well ahead of their peers, especially with younger and educationally at-risk students who were harmed the most from distance-learning in other states.

In 2022, Florida’s 4^th and 8^th grade students earned the state’s highest ever rankings in each assessment and demonstrated historic achievement gap closure for at-risk students at all levels.

Florida’s Hispanic students, black students, and students with disabilities all scored in the top 10 in every category. 

Nationally, low-income students and students with disabilities also suffered from the absence of physical school. 

In Florida, those students excelled compared to the nation:

• Students on Free and Reduced Lunch are ranked in the top 10 for average scale scores in three of four tests and improved massively on the fourth.
• Florida is in the top 5 for average scale scores of students with disabilities across all grades and subjects.

“We insisted on keeping schools open and guaranteed in-person learning in 2020 because we knew there would be widespread harm to our students if students were locked out. Today’s results once again prove that we made the right decision.

We also knew that younger and at-risk students would be the most impacted if schools were closed, and the results speak for themselves.

In Florida our 4^th grade students rank #3 in Reading and #4 in Math, achieving top 4 in both English and Math for the first time in state history, while lockdown California and New York aren’t even in the top 30.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis

These 2022 NAEP results also mirror the previous predictions from national and Florida student learning indications over the last two years:

• Florida’s Spring 2021 Grade 3 Reading results showed early indications that school districts with higher rates of in-person instruction had more consistent learning outcomes and achievement gap closure between Spring 2019 and Spring 2021.
• Education Week’s 2021 Quality Counts rankings, which ranked Florida #3 for K-12 Achievement, further validated those early indicators with a long list of high rankings and student gains for Florida students.
• A November 2021 National Bureau of Economic Research report, “2021: Pandemic Schooling Mode and Student Test Scores: Evidence from US States,” found that the decline in students’ 2021 test scores as compared to prior years was significantly larger in districts which offered less access to in-person schooling. The same study cited Florida as an exception, as a state with a high in-person learning rate.
• A May 2022 Harvard study, “The Consequences of Remote and Hybrid Instruction During the Pandemic,” similarly found “that gaps in ‘math achievement by race and school poverty’ didn’t widen in school districts in states like Florida and Texas that mostly kept schools open.”
• In June 2022, Florida’s Math and English Language Arts (ELA) test results showed that African American students, students from economically disadvantaged families, and Hispanic students had gains on all Mathematics and ELA metrics.
• In July 2022, Florida’s school grades defied all expectations when 53 schools exited the School Improvement Support list in 2022; 100% of schools graded F in 2019 improved their grades in 2022, including one that earned a B and six that earned a C; and 84% of schools graded D and F in 2019 improved their grades in 2022.

Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said the scores prove in-person instruction was the right call.

“[Governor DeSantis] kept kids in school despite intense pressure from media activists and teacher unions. The results? Florida’s 2022 #NAEP scores show we’re closing achievement gaps across the board, proving once again that in-person instruction was the right call,” Diaz said.

DeSantis announced Florida’s public schools would remain closed for the end of the 2019-2020 school year because of the pandemic. However, the Florida Department of Education became the first state to reopen schools for in-person instruction five days a week during the 2020-2021 school year.