Education Scorecard
Education Scorecard
The Education Scorecard provides the first opportunity to compare learning loss at the district level across the country, providing opportunities to further understand how time remote, federal dollars expenditure, and other factors impacted students during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and how reforms targeted at absenteeism, the science of reading, and social media use are impacting recovery from the "learning recession" the United States entered after 2013.
For press inquiries, contact Sam Stockwell, Director of Communications, at samuel_stockwell@gse.harvard.edu.
May 2026: From Learning Recession to Learning Recovery
This year marks a transition. Now that the federal pandemic relief dollars have been spent, the team has removed “Recovery” from our name to become the Education Scorecard. This year’s analysis shifts from pandemic recovery to a more forward-looking approach focused on identifying “districts on the rise” and studying what key factors may be affecting achievement, from cell phones and social media use to absenteeism.
The new report provides a mixed picture of American education: a post-pandemic math rebound and early signals that comprehensive literacy reforms are beginning to pay off, but signs that a U-shaped recovery has left middle-income districts are lagging behind.
“The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement,” said Professor Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. “The ‘learning recession’ started a decade ago, after policymakers switched off the early warning system of test-based accountability and social media took over children’s lives. In this report, we highlight the work of a small group of state leaders who have started digging out by changing how students learn to read, and 108 local school districts that are finding ways to get students learning again. The recovery of U.S. education has begun. But it’s up to the rest of us to spread it.”
Are we in a learning recession? Is social media harming achievement? What should leaders do next to help students make up lost ground—and which students remain farthest behind? Listen as CEPR Executive Director Christina Grant and CEPR Faculty Director Thomas Kane, a co-author of the Scorecard, walk through the answers to these questions and more.
CEPR's COVID Recovery Research In The News
Past Education Scorecard Research
Pivoting from Pandemic Recovery to Long-Term Reform
A new report from Daniel C. Dewey, Erin M. Fahle, Thomas J. Kane, Sean F. Reardon, and Douglas O. Staiger provides an updated look at student achievement from 2019-2024 and provides recommendations for combating chronic absenteeism and boosting catch-up efforts.
Read the report
Federal Pandemic Relief and Academic Recovery
A new report from Dan Dewey, Erin M. Fahle, Thomas J. Kane, Sean F. Reardon, and Douglas O. Staiger provides a look at the effect of federal pandemic relief ESSER spending and academic achievement.
Read the report
The First Year of Pandemic Recovery: A District-Level Analysis
A new report from Erin M. Fahle, Thomas J. Kane, Sean F. Reardon, and Douglas O. Staiger provides a look at the first year of academic recovery for school districts in 30 states.
Read the summary report
School District and Community Factors Associated With Learning Loss During the COVID-19 Pandemic
A new paper from Erin M. Fahle, Thomas J. Kane, Tyler Patterson, Sean F. Reardon, Douglas O. Staiger, and Elizabeth A. Stuart investigates how factors like school closures, community death rates, civic engagement, and social activity impacted learning loss during the pandemic.
Read the paper
What Do Changes in State Test Scores Imply for Later Life Outcomes?
A paper from Thomas J. Kane, Elena Doty, Tyler Patterson, and Douglas O. Staiger investigates investigate the past relationship between NAEP scores and students’ later life outcomes.
Read the paper
In January 2024, the Education Recovery Scorecard results showed that students’ math and reading scores improved from Spring 2022 to Spring 2023, making up about a third of their pandemic-era decline from 2019-2022 in math and a quarter of their decline in reading. In July 2023, NWEA released a report on recovery that indicated stalled progress towards academic recovery. The two reports used different samples, different methods, and different tests. Read a September 2024 analysis explaining the divergences.
Read the Analysis
About the Project
The Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard and Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project have collaborated to provide the first opportunity to compare learning loss and ensuing recovery at the district level across the country. In 2022, we and others reported that by the time all states returned to regular testing in the Spring of 2022, the average student in grades 3 through 8 had lost the equivalent of half a grade level in math achievement and a third of a grade level in reading achievement. In our latest work, we describe the two years of post-pandemic recovery, between the Spring of 2022 and the Spring of 2024.
Without this research, parents and policymakers in all but the largest school districts (the 26 districts that participate in the NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment) would have no way to know how the national trends have touched their students. According to Learning Heroes, over 90% of parents still think their child is at or above grade level. And local policymakers—even if they see their own state assessment scores cannot know how their district’s performance compares to other similar districts in the country. (Moreover, in the at least 13 states that have changed their proficiency definitions since 2019, district leaders have no way to know if achievement has returned to pre-pandemic levels or not.) Our hope is that these resources will prompt states and school districts to plan ambitious local efforts, addressing the large and persistent losses in math and reading since 2019. The interactive maps and corresponding data you will find on this site provide insight on trends in academic achievement and chronic absenteeism. When available, achievement data are disaggregated by race and poverty status to provide a complete picture of the disparities in learning loss across the country.
The Education Recovery Scorecard is supported by funds from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Kenneth C. Griffin and Citadel Catalyst, and the Walton Family Foundation. The Stanford Education Data Archive received separate funding from the Gates Foundation.