For students still feeling pandemic shock, clock is ticking

New report shows some progress but persistent achievement gaps; co-author Kane urges action before federal aid expires

by Elizabeth M. Ross - HGSE Communications

January 31, 2024 - 7 min read

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A new report from the Education Recovery Scorecard, a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard and the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, shows that some states, including Massachusetts, are still struggling to close academic achievement gaps that widened during the pandemic.

“The First Year of Pandemic Recovery: A District-Level Analysis” examined math and reading test scores in grades 3-8 in approximately 8,000 school districts in 30 states from spring 2019 to spring of last year. In a conversation about the findings, co-author Thomas Kane, an economist at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, urged school districts to invest remaining pandemic aid on academic recovery efforts before the funds expire in the fall. The interview was edited for clarity and length.

From your report, it seems the pace of recovery has been uneven. Could you give an overview of your findings?

If you looked across all the states, the recovery last year was actually large by historical standards. The recovery was twice as large as the average annual rate of change on the National Assessment of Educational Progress from 1990 to 2019 and 50 percent larger than the annual rate of change from 1990 to 2013, when math scores grew most rapidly. So, it was large, but it varied by state. Some states saw much bigger increases than others. But the most troubling finding was that higher-poverty districts which lost the most during the pandemic did not close the gap nationally. In some states, like Massachusetts, those gaps grew between 2022 and 2023. 

There were some bright spots. Alabama in math, and Louisiana, Illinois, and Mississippi in reading. Can you explain? 

Alabama is the only state to be back above its pre-pandemic achievement in math, and there are three states that are above their pre-pandemic achievement in reading: Illinois, Mississippi, and Louisiana. But this doesn’t mean that Alabama is finished with its recovery. Even in Alabama, the students in Montgomery are still about half a grade level behind. So, yes, there has been progress nationally and, in a few states, their average achievement is back above 2019 levels. But in most states, the achievement gaps between the high-poverty and the low-poverty districts are wider than they were in 2019.

In the states that have recovered significantly, are there lessons for other places? 

At this point, we can’t say exactly what made Alabama different. Our report is analogous to the National Assessment of Educational Progress — we are describing where progress is being made, but we’re not yet evaluating the efficacy of policies. There will be no National Assessment of Educational Progress for 2023, and so what we’ve done is we’ve used the state test scores to provide an alternative during this critical year, before the federal dollars run out. We’re describing what happened to achievement, not just at the state level, but at the individual district level. Soon, we and others will be using these data to understand what distinguished Alabama from Massachusetts. We’re just trying to get these [findings] out to inform policymakers and school districts while there’s still time.It’s especially important right now because there are only eight months left before the federal pandemic relief dollars expire.  

The interview continues, for full article please read Source