Steve Cortes, a national spokesman for the Never Bad PAC. | Twitter
Steve Cortes, a national spokesman for the Never Bad PAC. | Twitter
The results of the nation’s report card, a federal test that measures the math and reading abilities of the country’s 13-year-olds, were released Wednesday, falling to their lowest levels in decades, ABC News reported.
Steve Cortes, the founder of the League of American Workers and a national spokesman for the Never Bad PAC, a political committee supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), linked to the ABC News story and pointed to the decisions tied to the pandemic for the historically low scores in a statement on Twitter.
"Ugh," Cortes wrote. " A generation totally unprepared for productive lives. Causes: Lockdowns Both Parents Forced to Work Toxic Cultural Garbage Teachers Unions."
Math scores, in particular, showed a historic drop, plunging nine points between 2020 and 2023, the largest margin ever recorded. Reading scores fell four points over the same period, according to the ABC News report. Both results demonstrate the magnitude of setbacks suffered as a result of the pandemic.
Peggy G. Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the federal Education Department, said there are still "worrisome signs about student achievement," ABC reported.
“The ‘green shoots’ of academic recovery that we had hoped to see have not materialized,” Carr said in a statement, according to ABC.
ABC said similar drops were revealed last year in fourth and eighth-grade students' test scores. Math and reading scores had been falling even before the pandemic, but the new results revealed a "precipitous drop," erasing gains that had been achieved up to 2012, the report said. ABC said math scores are the lowest since 1990, and reading the lowest since 2004.
According to his Twitter profile, Cortes traded global currencies and interest rates for 25 years for large international hedge funds before entering politics. He’s been an on-air broadcaster for CNBC, Fox News, and CNN. He previously served as a senior spokesman and strategist for the Trump 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
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