COLUMBIA, S.C. — The State Department of Education has released SCPASS and SC READY test results from last school year.
SCPASS is a standardized test for students in fourth, sixth, and eighth grade and measures their learning progress in science and social studies.
Science scores from last school year showed a 3% increase in achievement.
The SC READY test is administered to students from third through eighth grade and showed some improvement by 2% in Math, and improvements in English Language Arts by 5%.
News19 spoke with South Carolina teacher of the year, Deion Jamison, who teaches English Language Arts, and he believes the standardized test scores reveal there is still more work to be done.
"Our scores were not that awesome before COVID," he said. "I think about this gap in achievement between students of color and white students, I think about students who have disabilities versus those who don't, I also think of students whose first language is not English."
Jamison and the State Board of Education say a lack of resources may have exacerbated pandemic learning loss for a lot of students.
In the future, Jamison says he hopes teachers will be a part of the conversations about measuring student accomplishment and curriculum decisions.
"Teachers need to have a voice in all of this because we see the day in and day out of how our students are doing," he explained.
Derek Phillips with the Department of Education says they are hoping these scores mean that students are recovering, and they hope to continue to harbor environments for greater learning.
"We are providing access to tutoring and putting resources out there to try to help students as best we can."
The Department of Education says they have no specific numerical goals for student success right now, they are just hoping to recover from pandemic learning loss.