The One Test We Can't Afford to Fail

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that reading and math exam scores plummeted during the pandemic. The nation’s report card, which was released last fall for the first time since before the start of the pandemic, showed lower scores in almost every state. While it will take years to fully unpack the impact the pandemic has had on children, there is already significant evidence that another test score – one with much higher stakes – is on the rise. If we want to see improvements in our academic environments, and beyond, that’s the test score that demands our attention.

An Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) score may not be as well-known a concept as, say, an SAT score, but it’s as important a predictor of academic success. More importantly, it’s a powerfully effective predictor of long-term health and overall wellbeing. ACEs are defined by the Centers for Disease Control as potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood (0 -17 years).  Abuse, neglect, and a range of household dysfunctions (such as witnessing domestic violence or growing up in environments plagued with chronic substance abuse, untreated mental illness, unpredictable parental separation, and/or violent crime) are all counted as ACEs, but it is important to note that this is not a comprehensive list. Anything that creates overwhelming fear and uncertainty for children can negatively impact brain development. 

"Fortunately, caring, loving educators have the power to protect and insulate children from the harmful long-term effects through a simple approach..."

The pandemic, and the school closures, isolation, parental job losses, and threats to health and safety it brought, created a significant rise in ACEs. Fortunately, caring, loving educators have the power to protect and insulate children from the harmful long-term effects through a simple approach: introduce play that prioritizes joy, strengthens a sense of community belonging, inspires active engagement, and promotes feelings of safety and empowerment into learning settings.  

Human beings are herd animals. In the past two million years (a relatively short period of time from an evolutionary standpoint) the human brain has approximately tripled in size. The reason for this rapid growth is to better enable us to collaborate in more complex social systems. Being closely connected to others is our most powerful survival strategy. It is also our greatest source of joy.

If you think about it (even if you don't) today’s third graders were sent home from school only a few months after they started kindergarten, and most didn’t return to a school building for a year or more. For more than half of their school experience so far these kids were taught that staying safe meant keeping distance from friends and teachers. Despite most schools now “returning to normal,” it’s not surprising that many of our students are struggling to do the same. 

Kids brains are wired for exploration of the world around them and affiliation with the people in it. Exploration and affiliation are what early childhood education is all about. In the service of preservation, however, the pandemic forced kids to act in a way that went against their nature.  In other words, if a child is unable to freely engage, connect, and explore the surrounding world, they are also unable to effectively learn.

Playing and learning are synonymous. Bringing more play into our schools is not simply about adding more recess, art, and gym (although that’s not a bad idea, either). It is about educators being intentional about weaving more joy, social connection, active engagement, and internal control into their curriculums. Doing so will dramatically reduce stress for both students and teachers, and it will foster bonds lost during our prolonged period of school closures and social distancing.

Encouraging curiosity and joyful exploration through play, in a setting where an adult is modeling support and love, is a proven ways to counteract the impacts of early trauma. Just one secure relationship with a trusted adult caregiver can completely change a child’s life.  In the words of Dr. Diana Fosha, a contemporary psychologist who specializes in helping adults heal from early childhood trauma, “The roots of resilience are to be found in the sense of being understood by and existing in the mind and heart of a loving, attuned and self-possessed other.”

An individual’s ACE score is calculated by tallying responses to 10 yes or no questions about childhood adversity: a yes response has a score of 1, a no response has a score of zero. The sum is the person’s ACE score. The higher the score, the more likely the individual is to experience negative health outcomes later in life. Higher ACE scores correlate with higher rates of depression, substance use, and chronic disease. A former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Robert Block, called ACEs the single greatest health threat facing our nation today.

For children, an ACE score of three increases odds of academic failure by three hundred percent, attendance problems five hundred percent, and behavioral problems six hundred percent. Without intervention, kids with higher ACE scores may also have difficulty creating and maintaining relationships, and they may have trouble trusting teachers or other authority figures. Our nation’s children are living through a very difficult period in history. Learning loss and empathetic disconnection is occurring not just because they lost physical time in classrooms, it’s happening because they lost months, or even years, of essential, life-affirming human connection.

Plummeting math and reading scores are concerning, but they should not be our priority. If we want healthier children and a healthier future, we need to address the silent ACEs epidemic that is ravaging the physical, social, emotional, and psychological health of our children.

To do this effectively, our children desperately more caring, trusted adults to engage playfully with them – and they need more play. A lot more.