rehema ellis now on how one district is getting back on track in our series, "kids under pressure." >> put your name on the page number because you're going to turn that in. >> reporter: in heather smith's class she knows exactly who is making the grade. >> we talk about goal setting, and they're my partners. >> reporter: partners in a data-driven approach to learning for the nearly 16,000 students in indianapolis' perry township school district started seven years ago, the it's now the perfect system helping to narrow the learning gap caused by the pandemic >> we didn't redesign. we got back to our design >> reporter: after math and reading scores dropped more than ten points, he says this very diverse district where 75% of students receive free or reduced lunch is now getting back on track. >> this isn't something that we're going to fix within two years. this is going to be a long-range process of building skills. >> reporter: and how are they doing it? monthly tests called evaluate in both reading and math focused lesson plans you're tailoring your lessons to accommodate the needs

rehema ellis has details. >> have you agreed upon a verdict >> yes >> reporter: in a unanimous verdict the jury declaring alex jones must pay $965 million to the families of eight sandy hook victims and an fbi agent emotional relief in the court as the verdict was read >> after almost a decade of press and messages from conspiracy theorists led by jones, this is a moment years in the making >> reporter: jones was not in the courtroom for the verdict but immediately reacted on his online show calling the attorneys for the victims' families ambulance chasers and mocking the verdict. >> 57 million, 20 million, 50 million, 80 million, 100 million. blah, blah you get a million, you get 100 million, you get 50 million >> reporter: 26 people were killed in the sandy hook elementary school, including 20 first graders. several family members testified in the connecticut courtroom about intense harassment, death d rape threats >> it is a constant fear >> reporter: from followers of conspiracy theorist alex jones who claimed for years the massacre was a hoax mark barton described the emotional st

it's the latest chapter in a growing immigration, rehema ellis is on new york's randall's island, where migrants are expected to be housed in new york. this has been going on for weeks now here in new york city. why is the mayor now declaring a state of emergency. >> he says the city is running through a billion dollars this fiscal year because of this humanitarian crisis. you'll hear more about that in a moment. first, i want you to hear from local elected officials who talks about her idea of the mayor's plan to house people here on randall's island, which is surrounded by water. take a listen. >> is this a good idea or a bad idea? >> this is a very bad idea. any human being needs a real roof over their heads and no one's home should be in a flood zone. >> this is unsustainable. the city is going to run out of funding for other priorities. >> reporter: and the mayor also points out there's something like 61,000 people already living in temporary shelters in new york, and there's just not enough places to put everybody. >> so is there anything being done on the front end? anything bein

joining us from outside of perform s 24 in the bronx msnbc rehema ellis.lt, it is just really hard to learn during the pandemic. what are schools doing about it, because there are some kids who are essentially missing out on a year of learning, they're a year behind. >> yes, it's true, and it's devastating for some people to even think about that they got to try and recoup that loss. and the people who might be thinking, well, it is everybody else's kids but not mine, according to the study, there were setbacks across every single one of the demographic groups, we know some kids were severely impacted more so than others because they had severe learning challenges even before the pandemic. but what we're seeing has been alarming. take a look, i think we have numbers for you, as far as math, math was the biggest problem, especially in the eighth grade. just 26% of eighth graders were proficient in math. that was down by 8 points. and reading, only 36% of fourth graders were proficient in reading. that's down from 41%. how are parents feeling about it? take

nicole. >> nbc's rehema ellis covering all of this for us. thank you so much. we'll stay on it. we are going to change gears to news we mentioned at the top of this hour. the january 6th select commit's first hearing in months is set to take place tomorrow afternoon. it could not come at a more critical time for our country just a few weeks ahead of the mid-term election day. voting is already under way in several key states where slates of election deniers and some outright proud insurrectionists are hoping to win elected offices with potentially dire consequences for our democracy if they win. the panel which reinvented the modern congressional hearing with its lively mix of footage from taped depositions and live witness testimony now have to refocus the country's attention on the deadliest attack on the u.s. capitol in accept industries and a political landscape that have changed. not only have big lie republicans won their primaries in key swing states the committee vice chair liz cheney has lost. her primary and has dedicated herself to keeping donald trump and big lie adv

rehema ellis has a closer look. how bad is it?rsus pre pandemic. i want to show you full screen here. when we talk about proficiency in math, the national rate in terms of math for fourth graders was down five points since 2019. eighth grade math down eight points. that means only 26% of eighth graders were proficient in math. when we look at reading, for fourth graders, the score was down three points and for eighth graders, the score was down three points. that average score fell again for nearly half of all the students for half of students in half of all the states in the country. so what it says to people is that the secretary of education says this should be a call to action for parents and teachers across-country. we talked to a couple of parents this morning about their reaction to these numbers. take a listen. >> i noticed a lot of delays with younger kids, too. and a lot of those very norm always that kids develop weren't happening for you know, for a pretty long time. >> again, as a teacher myself, i'm not surprised the

. >> rehema ellis, thank you very much. >>> a lucky one could be walking away with $610 million in today'sear history. three tickets during saturday's drawing matched five numbers. that was worth $1 million a piece. the winning tickets were sold right here in new york, also in texas, and south carolina. now, if you win tonight's drawing, and take a one-time cash payout, right now, that would be around a cool 300 million. i could get by on that. >>> that's going to do it for us this hour. make sure you join us from "chris jansing reports" every weekday 1:00 eastern time on msnbc. katy tur is up next. c. katy tur is up next. but we also write. [szasz] we take care of ourselves constantly; it's important. we walk three to five times a week, a couple miles at a time. - we've both been taking prevagen for a little more than 11 years now. after about 30 days of taking it, we noticed clarity that we didn't notice before. - it's still helping me. i still notice a difference. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. my asthma felt anything but normal. ♪ ♪ it was time for a nunormal with nucala. nuca

rehema ellis has details. >> reporter: more evidence tonight that nearly three years of pandemic disruptions had a devastating effect on students the national assessment of educational progress tested nearly 450,000 fourth and eighth-graders across the country. the math results were especially alarming. only 26% of eighth-graders were proficient or above in math, down from 34% in 2019 the average eighth grade math score fell in every state except utah >> the literature has shown us that math was very sensitive to instruction. >> reporter: in reading just 33% of fourth-graders were proficient or above, down from 35%. in union, new jersey one superintendent is keenly aware of the problem. >> challenges are greater than i've experienced in any year of my 30-year career >> reporter: whaare they doing about it? in the classroom teachers focus on small group instruction, closely track individual progress throughout the year, and students spend time relearning social skills that experts say are necessary to improve their academics. >> in terms of saying just how effective it is, would you say you k

nbc news correspondent rehema ellis is outside a public school in new york city. a hela, this is the first test conducted since 2019 and the first assessment of all of this before covid was the last one. what are the other headlines we're seeing. >> well, one of the headlines that we should be mindful of is that this is a test of some 450,000 students all across country so if people are thinking it's somebody else's kids not mine, it's everybody's kids. one of the things that they said about this is every single demographic was affected by pandemic learning. it was not good for our kids. you put up some. numbers, but let me give you more indication of what was happening, particularly a problem in math. we found that that was the biggest setback, particularly for eighth graders, only 26% of eighth graders were proficient in math and down eight points from 2019 and in reading, the results were not good either. only 36% of fourth graders were proficient in reading down from 41%. so, they knew it was bad before, but it got even worse. when we look at these numbers of