New tool enables comparing NAEP, state tests results nationwide
A massive data project by researchers at Harvard and Stanford universities, released Friday, has converted national and state test scores into the equivalent measure of learning decline during the pandemic for every school district and student group in California and 28 other states.
The interactive data in the Education Recovery Scorecard confirm, in clear and stark terms, the disparities in performance and learning loss among states, districts within states and racial, ethnic and income groups within districts for grades three to eight. (Go here to start with California and other states.)
For California, the data in math translated into a straight downward line on a graph, showing that wealthier districts, those with a small percentage of low-income students, experienced the least loss of learning — a matter of a few weeks in Orinda, Lafayette and Los Gatos in the Bay Area — compared with the loss of three quarters or more in a grade equivalent in Bakersfield City and Mountain View Elementary school districts. (Go here for an interactive graphic showing learning decline in math for California districts — the blue circles.)
“Every poor district lost a lot, and rich districts lost a little, and that is the picture leaders in Sacramento should respond to,” said Sean Reardon, a Stanford Graduate School of Education professor and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, which led the data analysis.
The data also shows that states that were largely open for in-person instruction during 2020-21, the height of the pandemic, did not perform significantly better than those whose students learned remotely for most of that time. Students in all states declined in math relative to where they were before Covid, but the decline in California, the last big state to fully reopen, was, at the equivalent of 48% of a grade level. That was identical to Florida and slightly better than Texas, which had a 57% loss. In both states schools stayed open all year. The 12% decline in reading was nearly identical for all three states.