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The COVID-xix pandemic has introduced doubtfulness into major aspects of national and global lodge, including for schools. For case, there is dubiousness about how school closures final spring impacted student achievement, besides as how the rapid conversion of virtually instruction to an online platform this academic year will go on to affect achievement. Without data on how the virus impacts educatee learning, making informed decisions near whether and when to return to in-person pedagogy remains difficult. Even now, didactics leaders must grapple with seemingly impossible choices that balance health risks associated with in-person learning against the educational needs of children, which may be amend served when kids are in their physical schools.

Amidst all this uncertainty, there is growing consensus that school closures in spring 2020 likely had negative effects on student learning. For example, in an earlier post for this weblog, nosotros presented our research forecasting the possible affect of school closures on achievement. Based on historical learning trends and prior research on how out-of-schoolhouse-time affects learning, we estimated that students would potentially begin fall 2020 with roughly 70% of the learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year. In mathematics, students were predicted to testify even smaller learning gains from the previous year, returning with less than fifty% of typical gains. While these and other similar forecasts presented a grim portrait of the challenges facing students and educators this autumn, they were nonetheless projections. The question remained: What would learning trends in actual data from the 2020-21 schoolhouse yr really look like?

With fall 2020 data now in paw, we tin motion across forecasting and brainstorm to describe what did happen. While the closures last spring left about schools without assessment information from that fourth dimension, thousands of schools began testing this fall, making it possible to compare learning gains in a typical, pre-COVID-19 year to those same gains during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using information from nearly 4.iv one thousand thousand students in grades iii-8 who took MAP^® Growth™ reading and math assessments in autumn 2020, nosotros examined two master research questions:

1. How did students perform in fall 2020 relative to a typical school twelvemonth (specifically, autumn 2019)?
2. Take students made learning gains since schools physically closed in March 2020?

To answer these questions, nosotros compared students' academic achievement and growth during the COVID-19 pandemic to the achievement and growth patterns observed in 2019. Nosotros report student accomplishment as a percentile rank, which is a normative measure of a student's achievement in a given course/discipline relative to the MAP Growth national norms (reflecting pre-COVID-nineteen accomplishment levels).

To brand sure the students who took the tests before and afterwards COVID-19 schoolhouse closures were demographically similar, all analyses were express to a sample of viii,000 schools that tested students in both fall 2019 and autumn 2020. Compared to all public schools in the nation, schools in the sample had slightly larger total enrollment, a lower percentage of low-income students, and a higher pct of white students. Since our sample includes both in-person and remote testers in fall 2020, we conducted an initial comparability written report of remote and in-person testing in fall 2020. Nosotros institute consequent psychometric characteristics and trends in examination scores for remote and in-person tests for students in grades 3-8, but circumspection that remote testing conditions may be qualitatively unlike for M-2 students. For more details on the sample and methodology, delight see the technical study accompanying this report.

In some cases, our results tell a more optimistic story than what nosotros feared. In others, the results are as deeply concerning equally nosotros expected based on our projections.

Question i: How did students perform in fall 2020 relative to a typical school year?

When comparison students' median percentile rank for fall 2020 to those for fall 2019, at that place is practiced news to share: Students in grades 3-8 performed similarly in reading to aforementioned-class students in fall 2019. While the reason for the stability of these accomplishment results cannot be easily pinned down, possible explanations are that students read more than on their own, and parents are better equipped to support learning in reading compared to other subjects that crave more formal instruction.

The news in math, however, is more worrying. The figure below shows the median percentile rank in math by grade level in fall 2019 and fall 2020. Equally the effigy indicates, the math achievement of students in 2020 was about 5 to 10 percentile points lower compared to same-grade students the prior year.

Effigy ane: MAP Growth Percentiles in Math past Grade Level in Fall 2019 and Autumn 2020

Source: Author calculations with MAP Growth data.
Notes: Each bar represents the median percentile rank in a given grade/term.

Question 2: Have students made learning gains since schools physically closed, and how do these gains compare to gains in a more typical yr?

To answer this question, we examined learning gains/losses between winter 2020 (Jan through early on March) and fall 2020 relative to those same gains in a pre-COVID-19 catamenia (between winter 2019 and autumn 2019). We did not examine jump-to-fall changes because then few students tested in spring 2020 (after the pandemic began). In nearly all grades, the majority of students made some learning gains in both reading and math since the COVID-xix pandemic started, though gains were smaller in math in 2020 relative to the gains students in the same grades made in the winter 2019-fall 2019 period.

Figure 2 shows the distribution of alter in reading scores by grade for the winter 2020 to autumn 2020 flow (light blue) as compared to same-grade students in the pre-pandemic bridge of winter 2019 to fall 2019 (dark bluish). The 2019 and 2020 distributions largely overlapped, suggesting similar amounts of within-student change from one form to the adjacent.

Figure two: Distribution of Within-student Modify from Winter 2019-Fall 2019 vs Winter 2020-Autumn 2020 in Reading

Source: Author calculations with MAP Growth information.
Notes: The dashed line represents zero growth (due east.g., wintertime and autumn examination scores were equivalent). A positive value indicates that a student scored higher in the fall than their prior wintertime score; a negative value indicates a student scored lower in the autumn than their prior winter score.

Meanwhile, Effigy 3 shows the distribution of change for students in different grade levels for the winter 2020 to autumn 2020 period in math. In contrast to reading, these results prove a downward shift: A smaller proportion of students demonstrated positive math growth in the 2020 period than in the 2019 period for all grades. For instance, 79% of students switching from iii^rd to iv^th grade fabricated academic gains between winter 2019 and fall 2019, relative to 57% of students in the same course range in 2020.

Figure 3: Distribution of Within-student Modify from Winter 2019-Fall 2019 vs. Wintertime 2020-Autumn 2020 in Math

Source: Author calculations with MAP Growth information.
Notes: The dashed line represents zilch growth (e.g., wintertime and fall test scores were equivalent). A positive value indicates that a student scored higher in the fall than their prior wintertime score; a negative value indicates a student scored lower in the fall than their prior winter score.

It was widely speculated that the COVID-19 pandemic would atomic number 82 to very unequal opportunities for learning depending on whether students had admission to engineering and parental back up during the schoolhouse closures, which would outcome in greater heterogeneity in terms of learning gains/losses in 2020. Notably, however, nosotros do not see evidence that inside-student change is more spread out this yr relative to the pre-pandemic 2019 distribution.

The long-term effects of COVID-19 are still unknown

In some means, our findings show an optimistic motion-picture show: In reading, on average, the accomplishment percentiles of students in fall 2020 were similar to those of aforementioned-grade students in fall 2019, and in almost all grades, nigh students made some learning gains since the COVID-nineteen pandemic started. In math, notwithstanding, the results tell a less rosy story: Student achievement was lower than the pre-COVID-nineteen functioning past same-class students in fall 2019, and students showed lower growth in math across grades 3 to viii relative to peers in the previous, more than typical yr. Schools will demand clear local data to understand if these national trends are reflective of their students. Boosted resource and supports should be deployed in math specifically to become students back on rails.

In this report, we limited our analyses to a consistent set of schools between fall 2019 and fall 2020. However, approximately one in iv students who tested within these schools in fall 2019 are no longer in our sample in autumn 2020. This is a sizeable increase from the xv% attrition from fall 2018 to autumn 2019. One possible explanation is that some students lacked reliable technology. A 2d is that they disengaged from school due to economical, wellness, or other factors. More than coordinated efforts are required to plant communication with students who are not attention school or disengaging from instruction to become them back on track, especially our most vulnerable students.

Finally, nosotros are simply scratching the surface in quantifying the curt-term and long-term academic and non-academic impacts of COVID-xix. While more students are back in schools now and educators have more feel with remote instruction than when the pandemic forced schools to close in spring 2020, the collective shock we are experiencing is ongoing. We volition continue to examine students' bookish progress throughout the 2020-21 school twelvemonth to understand how recovery and growth unfold amid an ongoing pandemic.

Thankfully, nosotros know much more than about the bear on the pandemic has had on student learning than we did fifty-fifty a few months ago. However, that knowledge makes clear that there is work to exist done to help many students go back on rails in math, and that the long-term ramifications of COVID-19 for student learning—especially among underserved communities—remain unknown.

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Source: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/12/03/how-is-covid-19-affecting-student-learning/

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