Learning Loss

Deciding to reopen schools in the fall of 2020 — during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic — was a controversial decision, but it felt like the right one for Jennifer Blaine, superintendent of Spring Branch Independent School District in Texas.

“If you talk to any superintendent, probably one of the most difficult times in any of our professional careers was trying to deal with this, because it was just unprecedented,” Blaine said. 

Spring Branch ISD, though, became one of the first districts in the state to return to in-person learning — and Blaine said that getting students quickly back into the classroom paid off. The district has seen double-digit gains since the 2019-20 school year on every student assessment, and its high school graduation rates are among its highest ever. 

The pandemic was a strong reminder that trust, relationships and transparency are crucial for school leaders when it comes to communicating with families and communities, she said. 

“There was nothing rosy or cheery about the situation,” Blaine said. That’s why it was important for her to acknowledge to families during COVID that “this is a really hard situation” and that “we’re going to get through this together.”

Spring Branch ISD is one example of how the pandemic that began five years ago this month — and the mass infusion of federal emergency education funds that followed — spurred innovation and encouraged schools to be more nimble in addressing student, staff and parent needs. 

By rapidly distributing devices to all students, focusing on school-family communications and expanding summer programs and mental health services, schools reacted in ways that left many positive imprints on school cultures and the business of learning, say education experts.

But five years after March 2020, when the pandemic severely disrupted teaching and learning, some education stakeholders are disappointed that the energy that drove collaborations and innovations has mostly dissipated, and widespread reforms have not taken hold. What's worse, some say, is the return to the status quo of teaching and learning in many localities while academic achievement remains low and chronic absenteeism stays high.

"I don't think we have delivered on what people said they wanted, both educators, and students and families," said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which has monitored the pandemic's impact on schools. "The pandemic was an opportunity for us to assess how to do things differently, and yet, for the most part, I think we snap back to normality," Lake said.

'Kids are struggling right now'

What’s most urgent now is the focus on learning and having high expectations for academic achievement, education experts and families say.

Because of pandemic-induced trauma and disruptions to learning, some say educators' academic expectations of students dropped.

"I can't tell you how many kids are struggling right now," said Keri Rodrigues, founding president of the National Parents Union, a 1.7 million membership organization with more than 1,800 affiliated parent organizations in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Disappointing academic performances are, in part, because educators eased off high expectations during the pandemic and don't show an urgency to reverse the learning loss, she said.

"I think for some parents, it is soul-crushing to see how schools are giving up on kids because the pandemic happened. I really think that that is the most heartbreaking piece of this."

Educators and researchers have called for urgent action to boost academic performance, particularly for lower-achieving students who lost ground during the pandemic. 

Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has been monitoring the impact of COVID on schools, notes that 40% of 4th graders scored below basic in reading on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress. "That's really not good. Scoring below basic — you're really way behind," he said. 

In addition to pandemic learning loss, chronic absenteeism has been COVID's "indelible" mark on schools, said CRPE's Lake.

According to Malkus, chronic absenteeism is the No. 1 issue in education right now, especially its disproportionate impact on disadvantaged students. Chronic absenteeism is when a student misses 10% or more of school days over a school year — or about 18 days — for any reason, including excused and unexcused absences and suspensions. 

During the first year of the pandemic, schools messaged parents that gathering together was dangerous and could spread the virus — and while that was true, schools have since mostly lacked communication stressing the importance of school attendance, Malkus said. 

"We're having a hard time getting kids to come back regularly," he said. The national chronic absenteeism rate was 28% during the 2022-23 school year, just slightly lower than the 30% recorded the previous school year. 

Schools haven’t really had a chance to catch their breath since COVID subsided, said Barbara Hunter, executive director of the National School Public Relations Association.

Once schools reopened, they had to address the post-pandemic learning gap and deal with the big rise in chronic absenteeism rates. Additionally, she said, schools felt the general “seeds of distrust” in public education.

The latter challenge points to the need for school leaders to better communicate their positive stories, Hunter said. “I think one of the best things you can do to build trust and confidence is engaging families in their kids' education, in school events where they can see and feel the good stuff that's going on.”

'Listening and learning'

School-family relationships became vital during the pandemic. As their children accessed virtual math, reading, art and even physical education classes, most parents got to see for the first time just what their children were learning during the school day. Moreover, parents of young students had to be co-teachers in a new and unfamiliar model of online school. 

In some ways, that pandemic-era school-parent partnership sparked deeper appreciation for each party’s role in education. Schools got creative in meeting the needs of students and families. New Jersey's KIPP public charter school, for example, held night kindergarten classes so that working parents of K-1 students could support their children during online school. 

Connecticut's Manchester High School realized it had a serious problem a year into the pandemic when administrators saw that several dozen students were at risk of not graduating. It seemed they had disconnected from school when COVID-19 shifted everyone into virtual learning mode.

The 1,700-student school took a bold step to create from scratch a summer program with accelerated courses for those students, featuring fun, hands-on activities such as podcasting and cooking. Those efforts eventually evolved into a regular school year credit-building curriculum called Flight Academy that is putting more students on the path to a diploma, said Amanda Navarra, the program's creator and director. 

"We kept saying that we wanted to make changes, and we didn't want to snap back to normal," said Navarra. "We see this now. We're not just going to go back, even when schools have everyone back in the building all the time."

Navarra continues to refine the program, which has three staffers, with plans to add more career and college readiness skills and internships and possibly expand to serve more students. "It's a lot of listening and learning and trying to be responsive and trying to not put the operational first, but put the people first," she said.

‘We are still excluded’

But at the same time that districts were working to build relationships with families, fractures inevitably developed. As schools began opening campuses to in-person learning, parents and visitors were often shut out due to safety precautions, some parents say. 

And today, five years later, parents for the most part still feel unwelcome at schools, Rodrigues said. 

"We have not returned to normal when it comes to welcoming parents back into schools," she said. "It's almost as if those restrictions and the ability of schools to restrict parents from being kind of present in schools and being more deeply integrated just physically into the ecosystem of a school, it's never recovered."

Whether it is parents coming to campuses to read their child's class a book, to have lunch with their child, or to help deescalate their upset child, it "feels like we are still excluded from being in the school environment," Rodrigues said.

Some schools faced greater challenges with distrust in public education during COVID because of already meager district communications, said Vito Borrello, executive director of the National Association for Family, School and Community Engagement. 

On top of that, most teachers weren’t trained to engage with families before the pandemic, which exacerbated the problem, he added. If a teacher hasn’t spoken with a student’s family before, it’s more difficult to build trust and communicate with them when something negative happens. 

Indeed, public satisfaction with K-12 education in 2023 dipped back to 2000's record low of 36%, according to a Gallup poll. Satisfaction rates had steadily dropped from 50% in 2020, and they have now begun to rebound, hitting 43%, in 2024. 

Still, almost 1 in 5 school communicators reported a lack of trust in district communications among families in 2024, NSPRA’s Hunter said.

The parental rights movement, sparked at least partially by COVID, contributed to growing distrust in K-12, Borrello said.

Parents sought more involvement in their children’s education because of the urgent circumstances, Borrello said, and because they had a front-row seat to seeing their children learning from home.

“If there wasn’t good communication or better communication than previously, what parents rights did — or in some cases continues to do — is pit parents versus teachers,” he said.  

That movement, often praised by Republicans, has led in recent years to thousands of book bans in schools and libraries, curriculum restrictions, and efforts to combat districts’ diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

Some of that parent pushback escalated at contentious school board meetings and in protests against masks or other pandemic restrictions in front of district buildings. 

"When you see parents behaving that way, it's generally because they're deeply worried about their kids," Rodrigues said. What schools should be saying to parents is "Listen, I need you. I want us to have, like, not just transactions with each other. I want us to have a transformational relationship. I don't have anything to hide."

'We are hiding nothing from you’

During COVID, Spring Branch ISD faced claims from parents that teachers were trying to “indoctrinate” students through online learning, Blaine said. When she asked parents for examples, little was forthcoming.

“There was a period where I think parents became very distrustful, but I also think that was a narrative that was spun nationally and kind of layered on top of everybody’s school district,” Blaine said. “I will tell you in Spring Branch, we were not indoctrinating anybody.” 

While the school community has moved past that issue, Blaine said, it was a tough time to earn trust. And that's why Blaine found it even more crucial to quickly reopen schools. 

“That became super important, because if you're worried about what we’re doing, come in,” Blaine said. “Sign into the front office, make an appointment. We are hiding nothing from you. Come on in, and let’s see what’s going on.”

School transparency should especially be applied to students' academic progress, Rodrigues said. "That's part of how that trust breaks down with parents. Because don't lie to me and tell me that my child is doing fine when I can hear in my living room that he is struggling."

'Careful thought' about ed tech?

Not only did the pandemic fast-track the rush to provide every student with a device so they could learn from home, it also fueled greater use of learning platforms making school assignments, class notes and the status of grades easily accessible online.

Many students and parents found these portals valuable for tracking academic progress — or for seeing what schoolwork was still incomplete. 

Increased adoption of video conferencing technology, meanwhile, opened doors for virtual parent-teacher conferences — necessitated by the pandemic — to continue past the health crisis. In addition, the ed tech lets schools broadcast student performances and sporting events, which is especially helpful for parents who can't attend events in-person.

"If the technology is there, why would you not be giving parents every opportunity to engage when they can and how they can?" said Rodrigues.

Virginia’s Louisa County Public Schools, meanwhile, took an innovative turn during the pandemic to help families in the 511-square-mile rural district connect to the internet. There, like in many rural areas, connectivity is a challenge, said Doug Straley, superintendent of the 5,300-student district. 

So the district had its career and technical education students and staff build solar-powered Wireless on Wheels units during COVID. They built about 30 units and placed them throughout the county so families could drive up and get connected to high-speed internet. 

Some of those units are still in use, Straley said, as the county continues to install fiber internet infrastructure for the greater community. The project is expected to be completed in one to two years. 

K-12's reliance on ed tech has grown stronger since the beginning of the pandemic when some school systems struggled to provide school-issued devices and reliable internet connections. 

But in the rush to quickly adopt ed tech, crucial steps were missed, some say. 

"I think we've had a long tail of the increased use of devices without necessarily all the training, evolution, careful thought that should go into how and when and for how long those devices are used," said Malkus. 

Administrators and teachers should carefully consider the purpose of digital learning tools — and only use them when confident they benefit students. Otherwise, teacher-led instruction is preferable, he said.

"I think that the rapid adoption of so many online tools sort of hopped, skipped and jumped over a lot of that checking," Malkus said.

‘Have to weather the storm’

While school leaders say they are eager to expand on the best practices learned from the pandemic, a slew of changes emanating from the new Trump administration — including the dramatic dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education — is unleashing another wave of uncertainty.

Parents have many questions and concerns about the impact the Education Department changes will have at the local level, according to the National Parents Union. At the same time, some other parent groups are excited about and supportive of the federal push to give parents and schools more decision-making power. 

Blaine said she is “very worried” about the fallout, given that Spring Branch ISD has a significant number of students from low-income households. If the Education Department ceases to be, Blaine said, a lot of questions remain about what would happen to the federal Title I funds that benefit high-poverty districts such as hers.

But if COVID has taught Blaine anything, she said, it is that “this too shall pass.”

“So much has happened in six years that has never happened before. We’ve got COVID. We have all of the indoctrination accusations,” Blaine said, and now there are threats of federal funding being pulled.

"We just have to weather the storm and instead of getting super worked up about it, for me, I’m going to advocate for my kids and I’m going to hold us all accountable.”

 

The Trump administration has all but axed the U.S. Department of Education's statistical research arm — the National Center for Education Statistics — sparing only a handful of employees who are left without department staff needed to analyze education data. 

"They didn't just RIF a few people, they deleted the agency for all intents and purposes," said an NCES employee of more than a decade who was part of the massive March 11 layoffs. 

The loss of over a hundred Institute of Education Sciences employees — including almost all of the NCES staff — comes as part of sweeping cuts to the Education Department that left the federal agency with only half of its workforce. NCES, which traces its existence to an 1867 law establishing a federal statistical agency to collect, analyze and report education data,  has been tasked with research and analysis on everything from graduation rates and student outcomes to teacher and principal development. 

Overall, NCES research tracked the condition of education in the nation, including gaps in achievement and resources for underserved students. During the pandemic, the unit closely analyzed trends in school resources and educator and student mental health. 

Perhaps most notably, NCES oversaw and ensured the quality of the Nation's Report Card, along with other key student outcome studies. School and college leaders rely on such NCES research to improve student performance, and its findings often help inform federal and state policymakers on funding decisions.

Now, those caught in the latest wave of the administration's cuts are warning that their haphazard nature will lead to a decline in the quality of assessments and data overseen by NCES. Longtime NCES employees report being fired at a moment's notice and abruptly losing access to years — sometimes decades — of work, with no communication from the administration about how to offboard so as to preserve and pass on critical information. 

"A lot of institutional knowledge is going to be lost," said another former NCES employee who worked closely on the Nation's Report Card. This employee and the others who spoke to K-12 Dive asked to remain anonymous for fear that identification could affect their severance terms.

NAEP and international assessment employees impacted

Although NCES employees are nearly all gone, many of NCES' functions they previously carried out are congressionally mandated, meaning they will still need to be done. That includes portions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the Nation's Report Card. 

The required parts include: reading and math assessments in 4th and 8th grade, long-term trend assessments for 9, 13 and 17-years-olds, and 12th grade reading and math assessments. The long-term assessment for 17-year-olds was last administered in 2012, having been canceled during the pandemic, and again for this spring due to what the Education Department cited as funding issues.

Other portions of the federal test such as science, U.S. history and civics are optional. 

The federally mandated assessment has often served as a yardstick for student performance in various subjects, most notably reading and math. Following the pandemic, it helped educators understand which subject areas students struggled in the most during and following school closures. 

Congress also mandates that student performance be compared on an international level, a requirement usually fulfilled by the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. 

The latest round of PISA testing was expected to begin by the end of March. Plus, the main NAEP for grades 4, 8 and 12 was supposed to begin early next year — preparation for which was set to begin this summer, according to former NCES employees. 

The Education Department, in a March 13 statement emailed to sister publication Higher Ed Dive, said, "IES employees impacted by the reduction in force conducted none of the research related to NAEP, the College Scorecard, and IPEDS."

"That work is all done through contracts that are still maintained by the Department," said Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the department, in the statement.

Some NCES contracts that were terminated as part of the $900 million in federal contract cuts have been revived, those laid off said. Just prior to being let go, employees were in the throes of reestablishing contractual relationships and systems required to carry out some congressionally mandated assessments. 

The laid-off employees refuted the department's assertion that those who were fired "conducted none of the research related to NAEP." Instead, they say, the employees were tasked with ensuring the quality of both the research collection and the post-collection analysis. 

Meaning: Some of the contracts for required assessments were canceled, then revived, and then in the process of being reestablished by NCES employees — who were then fired and blocked from accessing the technology systems they say they needed to pass on their knowledge and thereby maintain assessment quality. 

One of the former employees K-12 Dive spoke with described the situation as "chaotic" and said the handful of remaining employees are "overwhelmed." 

"It can't function in the current state it's in," said the employee who had worked on NAEP. "The Nation's Report Card is not going to be the gold star that it has been." 

Department restructuring on the horizon

The administration takes a different view. 

“Despite spending hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds annually, IES has failed to effectively fulfill its mandate to identify best practices and new approaches that improve educational outcomes and close achievement gaps for students," said Biedermann in the emailed statement.

Biedermann said the administration plans to restructure IES in the coming months "with input from existing leadership and expert stakeholders so that the Institute provides states with more useful data to improve student outcomes while maintaining rigorous scientific integrity and cost effectiveness." 

One of NCES’ longtime leaders, Peggy Carr, was appointed commissioner for NCES by the Biden administration in 2021 after serving as associate commissioner for assessment for over two decades. As such Carr has been the leading voice on the Nation's Report Card in recent years.

Carr was put on administrative leave in February, in the lead-up to the Trump administration's staffing cuts. Her position remains within the department, according to an organizational chart provided by the department to AFGE Local 252, a union representing a majority of the workers laid off, on March 11 just prior to the layoffs. The chart shows both remaining positions and shuttered departments.

The Education Department and its human resources office did not respond to multiple requests from K-12 Dive on the status of Carr's employment.

Prior to the cuts that laid off nearly her entire department, Carr was spearheading the modernization of NAEP, including the remote proctoring and administration catapulted forward by the pandemic. The department had already field-tested online administration in the past few years and was on track to remotely administer the assessment by 2026. 

Such a transition requires research like bridge studies — which allow older assessment results to be compared to newer versions of the test — and analyses overseen by the kind of NCES employees who are now laid off, NCES assessment experts have said. 

"From what I know, they've cut that out because the new administration wants to do the bare minimum," said the NCES employee familiar with NAEP. "I think they want to do everything barebones."

'Everybody relies on NAEP data'

The department said in a March 14 letter to education stakeholders that, "These reductions are strategic cuts to offices and programs that will not directly impact students and families but rather empower states and localities."

However, educators and researchers disagree with the department's take and are shocked by the loss of half of the Education Department staff and nearly all of NCES.

The National Council on Teacher Quality — which includes district and state policymakers along with former teachers — warned that states are "likely to weaken or abandon commitments to maintaining high standards for student learning and accountability for student outcomes" as a result of the federal layoffs. 

"Without NAEP, we will not know to what extent children in Massachusetts are reaching the same standards of performance as children in Mississippi," the council said in a March 11 statement following the reduction in force. 

The council is also worried about the loss of NCES research on the teacher workforce, which states rely on to identify the extent of their supply and demand.

In an open letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon prior to the March 11 firings, William Bennett, education secretary under President Ronald Reagan, and Chester Finn, who served at the department under Reagan as an assistant secretary, highlighted NAEP's importance. 

The assessment is still "the single most important activity" of the department and serves as the "primary gauge by which we know how American education is doing, both nationally and in the states to which you rightly seek to restore its control," wrote Bennett and Finn, both of whom are conservatives who served under a Republican president who also wanted to shut down the Education Department.

Still, they decried any move to do away with NCES' flagship product: the Nation's Report Card. 

"You alluded to NAEP data during your confirmation hearing," they told McMahon, and Trump "deploys it when referencing the shortcomings of U.S. schools."  

"Everybody relies on NAEP data, and its governing board’s standards have become the criteria by which states gauge whether their own standards are rigorous enough," Bennett and Finn said.

That's partly what's taken many — including NCES employees themselves — by surprise: The statistical center and its data have long been considered a nonpartisan source of critical information by which administrations could measure whether their policies were effective. 

"No matter what side you're on, it's absolutely essential," a laid-off employee said. "It's our own quiet act of patriotism to put out objective data." 

Sponsored content

By Otus

Imagine a basketball game where players only see the score at the final buzzer. Without ongoing score updates, how could the team adapt their strategy or make effective adjustments mid-game? How would players know when to push harder, change their offensive approach, or tighten their defense?

In education, relying exclusively on end-of-year or summative assessments is similarly problematic.

Without regular check-ins throughout the learning process, educators can't clearly see student progress until it's often too late to make meaningful interventions. To genuinely address learning loss and support student success, educators need continuous, actionable insights into student performance.

Keeping Score: The Power of Real-Time Insights

Just as every basketball shot contributes critical information for coaches and players, every quiz, formative assessment, and classroom observation provides valuable insights into student learning. However, simply collecting this information isn't enough—educators must have immediate access to clear, consolidated data. Real-time visibility into student performance enables teachers and administrators to quickly identify learning gaps, misconceptions, or areas needing reinforcement.

Imagine if coaches had to wait days or weeks to review their team's performance data—they'd lose crucial opportunities to adjust and improve in the moment. In education, delays in data visibility can mean missed opportunities for intervention and remediation, impacting students’ academic trajectories.

Halftime Adjustments in the Classroom

Effective coaches never wait until the final buzzer to evaluate performance. They make mid-game adjustments based on every piece of data they have at their disposal. They make immediate adjustments based on every available statistic, tweaking strategies and addressing issues on the fly. Educators must adopt a similar mindset, analyzing interim assessment data, classroom observations, and ongoing student feedback to make informed instructional adjustments.

Specifically, continuous progress monitoring allows educators to:

• Quickly identify struggling students and promptly implement targeted interventions.
• Adapt instructional strategies to precisely address specific learning gaps.
• Provide timely enrichment and extension activities for students who master content quickly.

Avoiding Turnovers: Overcoming Data Overload

Although continuous data collection is essential, educators often face data overload. Disconnected data systems—spanning assessment results, attendance records, behavioral observations, and more—make it truly challenging to gain a clear, unified understanding of each student’s unique needs.

In 2025, it’s a must for schools to have a single source of truth.

By integrating academic, behavioral, and social-emotional data, you can provide educators with intuitive dashboards and actionable insights that help school leaders, teachers, and families collaboratively understand student progress, inform instructional decisions, and adjust interventions as needed.

Your Assistant Coaches: Engaging Families in the Learning Journey

Continuous progress monitoring also plays a critical role in strengthening family engagement. When families have access to clear, consistent updates about student performance, it fosters meaningful dialogue and collaboration between home and school. Parents and guardians can better support their children’s learning when they understand exactly where their child is excelling or needs support.

Empowering Educators with a Winning Playbook

Just as championship teams rely on comprehensive tools to interpret game-time data, K-12 educators benefit significantly from a robust solution specifically designed for simplified, real-time progress monitoring.

Otus provides exactly that—a unified, user-friendly platform empowering educators with:

• Customized Student Growth Plans: Easily create and manage tailored intervention plans addressing academic, behavioral, and social-emotional learning goals.
• Integrated Assessment Data: Seamlessly connect student growth plans to third-party assessments like NWEA, iReady, and Dreambox Math, ensuring actionable insights at your fingertips.
• Clear Visibility Across Schools, Classrooms, and Grade Levels: Quickly identify students who require additional support or enrichment and respond proactively.
• Immediate Feedback and Adjustments: Instantly see what's effective and swiftly adjust interventions to keep every student on the path to success.
• Strengthened Family Collaboration: Provide families with real-time progress updates, fostering stronger school-home connections.

By centralizing essential student data and insights, Otus equips educators to make winning decisions—ensuring every student is positioned to succeed throughout the season.

Recent research from the Learning Policy Institute and Wallace Foundation highlights best practices to bolster support and investment in summer learning programs from nine geographically and politically diverse states.

Researchers examined how state leaders in Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Vermont are approaching summer programming as a key driver to help students recover from learning gaps that widened during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

While summer learning can help boost academic achievement beyond the traditional school year, state leaders see value in these programs for helping to support mental health and social connections for students, according to the research.

Summer learning programs have played a significant role in many state and local strategies to help address learning loss following the pandemic, leading to their prioritization in pandemic relief spending.

To increase access to summer learning options, states are working to expand funding options through grants and other financial avenues, the LPI and Wallace Foundation report says.

But as funding streams like the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund are winding down, states are working to maintain more long-term support — both politically and financially — to sustain summer learning opportunities. They recognize that in addition to academic learning, these programs can also provide career training, social-emotional benefits, and support for working families that may struggle with child care when the academic year ends.

To ensure that summer learning programs remain available and open to as many students as possible, states are collecting data such as participation rates and performance metrics to illustrate the effectiveness of these opportunities.

The LPI and Wallace Foundation research identifies five “categories of action” in the data analyzed from the nine states it used as case studies. They include how state leaders:

• Built support for summer learning investments.
• Implemented state grant programs to fund those efforts.
• Increased access for specific student groups, including those performing below grade level, those needing additional services, and those from underserved communities.
• Promoted rigorous, high-quality programming while maintaining flexibility for providers.
• Collected and used data to measure impact, inform improvement efforts, and advocate for ongoing investment.

Based on their findings, the study’s authors identify policy considerations for each category of action. “In many states, the full potential of the summer months remains untapped,” the researchers wrote. “As state leaders consider future involvement in the summer learning sector, they can learn from the approaches that have worked for other states and adopt or modify those that align with their unique state goals and contexts.”

Math and reading scores declined or held steady for special education students on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress — for both 4th and 8th graders — when compared to NAEP results from 2022 and 2019.

The biggest decline came with 2024’s average score for 8th grade math, which dropped to 238, down from 242 in 2022 and 247 in 2019.

Looking at reading scores for 2024, 72% of 4th graders with disabilities, including those with a 504 plan, scored below basic — the lowest achievement category. For 8th graders, 66% of students with disabilities scored below basic. The other categories are: at or above basic, at or above proficient, and at advanced. 

On the 2024 math assessment, 53% of 4th graders and 74% of 8th graders with disabilities scored below basic.

Scores for all students dropped

While the decline in scores from pre- and post-COVID-19 performances are disappointing to many in the special education field, the scores from students with disabilities are similar to the average score declines seen for all students. 

Reading scores in 2024 for both 4th and 8th graders overall dropped 5 points from 2019 levels. For math, the average score decreased by 3 points for 4th graders and 8 points for 8th graders between 2019 and 2024. 

Education experts cite the lingering impacts of COVID-19 learning loss and high rates of chronic absenteeism as possible explanations for declining NAEP scores. A severe shortage of special educators could explain the low performance of students with disabilities, the experts say. 

For the 2024 NAEP cycle, students with disabilities comprised 13% to 15% of test takers. NAEP considers students with disabilities as those who may need specially designed instruction to meet their learning goals. A student with a disability will usually have an individualized education program.

About 90% of students with disabilities participated in the 4th and 8th grade NAEP math assessments for 2024, and about 65% did so with accommodations. For the reading assessments, 89% of students with disabilities participated, and 63% used accommodations. 

Andrew Kahn, associate director of expertise and strategic design at Understood, a nonprofit that offers resources for people with learning differences, said the key to seeing large-scale reading improvements is investments in early educational screening and targeted interventions with evidence-based learning approaches. 

"The takeaway message for states is that you must consistently invest in screening early readers and provide evidence-based interventions, particularly structured literacy," Kahn said in an email. "We know more today than ever before how to support readers. But states have to make a consistent investment in both finding and supporting these learners."

Where performances improved

While the 2024 national results for students with disabilities were disappointing, there were several state and local bright spots.

Alaska, for example, increased average reading scores for 4th graders with disabilities by 13 points from 2019 to 2024. Idaho saw a 17-point bump in 4th grade reading for students with disabilities from 2022 to 2024.

For 8th grade reading, the District of Columbia increased scores of students with disabilities by 10 points from 2019 to 2024. 

In math, Massachusetts recorded 12-point growth from 2022 to 2024 for 4th graders with disabilities. 

But for 8th grade math, no state increased scores for students with disabilities in 2024 over 2019 and 2022 results.

One state stands out for performance increases across subjects, student groups and grade levels. Louisiana increased 4th grade reading scores for all students between 2019 and 2024. The state also saw higher scores for students with disabilities in 4th grade reading and math from 2022 to 2024. 

The improvements in Louisiana can be credited to the state's efforts to boost coordination and collaboration between general and special education instruction and other programming, said Jenna Chiasson, deputy superintendent of the Louisiana Department of Education's office of teaching and learning, and Meredith Jordan, executive director of diverse learners. 

For example, there’s a consistent and mindful intention to have special education professionals participate in decision-making for instructional practices and policies at the local and state levels, they said.

"We will continue with this strategy that is proving results for us, and continuing to break down and really blurring the lines between general education and special education in our state," Jordan said.

Chiasson and Jordan also point to the state's Special Education Playbook that emphasizes special education students are general education students first — and that students with disabilities should be academically challenged and have access to high-quality instruction and supports. 

The state is continuing to ensure educators at the state, district and school levels have these best practices and also that parents are supported, they said. 

"Despite this incredible progress, we still don't have all students achieving mastery and performing at grade level in reading and math," Jordan said. "And so until we reach that point, we will always be dedicated and ensuring this consistent implementation of our instructional best practices across our state."

NAEP, which is administered by the National Center for Education Statistics, is the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what the nation's students know and can do in various subject areas.

More than 100 school districts nationwide are performing at or above pre-pandemic levels in math and reading, according to the latest installment of the Education Recovery Scorecard.

Released Feb. 11, the report — produced by researchers at Stanford and Harvard universities — provides snapshots of what's working in these districts. But despite those success stories, its authors also found that economic and racial disparities worsened. 

For instance, the highest-income districts were four times more likely than the lowest-income districts to have recovered in both math and reading.

Even so, researchers found several cases where higher-poverty districts saw significant recovery in both subjects. For example, both Texas’ Ector County Independent School District and California’s Compton Unified School District were among those showing "exemplary progress." 

But often — and particularly in high-poverty districts — widespread chronic absenteeism is hindering academic recovery, the researchers said. Though the complete impact of ongoing attendance challenges remains unclear. 

The researchers also pointed to the impact of the federal government’s historic influx of pandemic aid, saying it prevented even larger learning losses in higher-poverty school districts. 

The Education Recovery Scorecard builds upon the recent data released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. While NAEP focuses on progress at the state level and in 26 large urban districts, the scorecard digs deeper into performance and trends in over 8,000 districts nationwide by aligning the NAEP results with annual statewide testing data.

Here are key high-level figures that stand out in the latest installment of the Education Recovery Scorecard.

The nation's 4th and 8th graders once again posted underwhelming performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, with 2024 results showing little to no progress toward regaining pre-pandemic levels in math and reading.

Average scores in reading actually dropped from 2022 in the latest results for the assessment, known as the Nation's Report Card, released Jan. 29 by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.

Reading scores in 2024 for each grade level fell 5 points from 2019 levels. For math, the average score dipped 3 points for 4th graders and 8 points for 8th graders between 2019 and 2024. 

And just since 2022, average reading scores fell 2 points for both grades 4 and 8. The decline continues a downward trend that began in 2019, according to NCES.

“NAEP has reported declines in reading achievement consistently since 2019, and the continued declines since the pandemic suggest we’re facing complex challenges that cannot be fully explained by the impact of COVID-19,” said NCES Associate Commissioner Daniel McGrath in a Jan. 29 statement. 

In math, however, 4th graders showed small signs of progress — their national average score rose by about 2 points since 2022. There was no notable change for 8th grade math scores between 2022 and 2024.

In a statement, NCES Commissioner Peggy Carr said signs of learning loss recovery “are mostly math and largely driven by higher-performing students. Lower-performing students are struggling, especially in reading.”

The worrying trends persisted at the state level, especially with reading scores.

Between 2019 and 2024, only one state — Louisiana — saw an increase in 4th grade reading scores, while 11 states showed no significant change and scores in 38 states decreased. For 8th grade, no states saw improvement in reading compared to 2019 — though 12 had no significant change and 38 showed declines. 

In math, Alabama was the only state to see an increase for 4th grade between 2019 and 2024. At the same time, 4th grade math scores dropped for 21 states and 28 saw no significant change from 2019. 

Meanwhile, for 8th grade, math scores did not rise in any states from 2019 to 2024. In fact, 49 saw a decrease while only Tennessee had no significant change. 

Although Carr reiterated at a Jan. 28 press briefing that the “news is not good,” she acknowledged signs of hope in the results from Louisiana and Alabama. 

Asked if curriculum reforms such as investments in the science of reading were working, Carr pointed to Louisiana’s success and said the state has “heavily” focused on the science of reading for several years. “I wouldn’t say that it’s not working,” she said.

There’s also a “strong relationship” between student absenteeism and NAEP performance, Carr said. 

“We should care because students who are lower performers are more likely to be absent, and their scores are the lowest,” Carr said. “If students aren’t in school, they can’t learn, and that is what these data underscore.”

The NAEP results come just as the final spending deadline hit on Jan. 28 for the historic influx of federal relief funds meant to help school districts recover from COVID-19. With the total $190 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds now in the rearview mirror for most districts, the NAEP results will raise questions about the success of those efforts.

While districts were required to spend at least 20% of the American Rescue Plan’s ESSER dollars to address lost learning time for students, the federal funds were also commonly used toward facility upgrades, hiring staff for additional academic and social support for students, or staff wellness activities.

House Education and Workforce Chair Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Michigan, shared his dismay over the NAEP results in a Jan. 29 statement.

“When we fail our children, we fail our nation’s future. Today’s NAEP scores continue the concerning trend of declining performance nationwide,” Walberg said. “This is clearly a reflection of the education bureaucracy continuing to focus on woke policies rather than helping students learn and grow.”

Moving forward, “urgent attention” is needed for the nation’s lowest-performing students, particularly those who scored at the 10th and 25th percentiles on the Nation's Report Card, said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, during the press briefing. 

“The governing board sets a high bar for what we expect students to know and be able to do,” Muldoon said. “That bar signals now what it has always signaled, that high expectations matter.”