News

SLS Summer 2026 Newsletter

June 17, 2026

Dear friends, It’s been a busy season for States Leading States as the weather has warmed up! Last month, I had the opportunity to attend the 2026 Strategic Data Project (SDP) Convening in Cambridge, and it reminded me how hard so many people are working...

Schools Must Do the Hard Work If High-Dosage Tutoring Is to Help Every Student

May 27, 2026

There is a temptation in education to abandon projects rapidly and instead chase a new solution as a magic bullet for improving student outcomes. Too often, when an investment doesn’t have an instant payoff, it’s abandoned for the next shiny thing. New...

Christina Grant

What's behind the decade-long 'learning recession' for American students

May 22, 2026

William Brangham: As the school year is coming to a close, a new analysis shines yet another harsh spotlight on what's being called a learning recession for America's students. And it's a problem that started long before the pandemic. That's according to...

Tom Kane has tracked years of U.S. test scores. Here’s what he’s learned — and still can’t explain.

May 21, 2026

Just about everyone in education is trying to figure out why student achievement has been declining and how to raise it back up. If anyone would know the answer it might be Tom Kane, a Harvard University professor who has been poring over data on student...

Kids' test scores began declining way before COVID. These schools are making gains

May 13, 2026

The pandemic-era backslide in math and reading scores for students across the U.S. was not a sudden catastrophe but the continuation of a brutal, decade-long "learning recession" that began years before COVID-19's arrival. That's according to the latest...

Anatomy of a ‘Learning Recession’: Academic Losses Began in 2013, Report Finds

May 13, 2026

The United States entered a “learning recession” in 2013 that it has struggled mightily — and thus far ineffectively — to escape, according to a report unveiled Wednesday by a group of respected social scientists. A steep drop in student performance was...

Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a ‘Generation-Long Decline’

May 13, 2026

Something troubling is happening in U.S. education. Almost everywhere in America, students are performing worse than their peers were 10 years ago, according to new, district-level test score data released Wednesday by the Educational Opportunity Project...

Kids are in a ‘reading recession’ as test scores continue to decline

May 13, 2026

MODESTO, Calif. – Before every important test, teacher Nancy Barajas dims the lights, turns on a disco ball and blasts music from her playlist. Her sixth graders dance together as a “pre-celebration” to boost their confidence, then take their exam. Lately...

Look Up Your School District’s Test Scores

May 13, 2026

Read more about why that’s happening: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/upshot/test-scores-school-districts-… Below, you can look up how test scores for your district have changed since 2015. (Note that some states — New York among them — are...

Using Multimodal Classroom Data to Measure Student Competencies for Upward Mobility

May 05, 2026

Led by a leading scholar of classroom interaction and mathematics education and supported by established partnerships with districts and education technology firms, the project is positioned to produce scalable tools that help teachers identify and...

Want better schools? It’s all up to states.

March 16, 2026

Southern states have historically underperformed in educational achievement. But a recent rise in test scores in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee has led some experts and journalists to describe the “Southern surge” as one of the few bright...

More American students are attending private school. Why do so few take NAEP?

March 12, 2026

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is known as the nation’s report card. But as more students leave public schools, the test risks becoming less representative of the nation’s students. Unlike public schools, private schools aren’t required...