How far COVID set students back: State-by-state report card
FILE-A teacher talks with students inside a classroom in Laguna Niguel, California. (Photo by Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
New data of state and national test scores reveals that the average U.S. student is still half a grade level behind pre-pandemic levels of achievement in reading and math.
This is based on data from the Education Recovery Scorecard or Nation's Report Card, an analysis of state and national test scores by researchers at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth.
How is data gathered for the report card?
The scorecard examines academic performance of students in math and reading in 8,719 school districts across 43 states. The Education Recovery Scorecard combines the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results with state test results for about 35 million third grade to eighth grade students between 2019 and 2024.
This new data for the report contains statistics on tests taken in the spring of 2024, a time when the worst part of COVID-19 had passed.
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Separately, the report shows that some school districts are struggling, despite their students posting decent results on state tests.
This is due to states using their own assessments which can present challenges when determining whether students are performing better academically because they are making progress or if these changes are based on the tests changing, or the state has lowered its standards for expertise.
Scorecard shows reading and math scores drop
By the numbers:
The analysis finds that higher-income districts have made more progress than lower-income districts, with the top 10% of high-income districts four times more likely to have recovered in both math and reading compared with the poorest 10%. And recovery within districts remains divided by race and class, especially in math scores. Test score gaps grew in race and income.
What they're saying:
"The losses are not just due to what happened during the 2020 to 2021 school year, but the aftershocks that have hit schools in the years since," Tom Kane, a Harvard economist who worked on the scorecard, told the Associated Press.
"The pandemic has not only driven test scores down, but that decline masks a pernicious inequality that has grown during the pandemic," Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist who worked on the scorecard, explained to the AP. "Not only are districts serving more Black and Hispanic students falling further behind, but even within those districts, Black and Hispanic students are falling further behind their white districtmates."