Four-day school weeks have proliferated across the United States, but little is known about their implementation or their effects on students. This study uses district-level data from Oklahoma  to provide estimates of the causal effect of the 4-day school week on high school students’ ACT scores, attendance, and disciplinary incidents during school.

New research using data from over 2,300 rural schools across the US provides unique insight into math and reading achievement of students in rural schools so educators and policymakers can better understand and support the potential needs of rural schools.

This study reports achievement and growth from kindergarten to 4th grade for three groups of English Learners. The findings suggest summer support is required to help ELs maintain and develop academic skills.

This study reports achievement and growth from kindergarten to 4th grade for three groups of English Learners. The findings suggest summer support is required to help ELs maintain and develop academic skills.

The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with political and social unrest, has deeply disrupted the lives and learning experiences of most students. It has created an urgent need to address long-standing opportunity gaps and has highlighted the importance of providing resources that support student achievement, social-emotional learning, and physical and mental well-being. This urgency for action to address the impacts is valid, but it has also created a noisy environment of potential options of what might be best for students. It’s critical, now more than ever, for decisions to be grounded in solid research.

The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and to describe more fully the sample and methods used in the research included in the brief, Learning during COVID-19: An update on student achievement and growth at the start of the 2021-22 school year. We investigated two research questions:

1. How does student achievement in fall 2021 compare to pre-pandemic levels (namely fall 2019)?
2. How did academic gains between fall 2019 and fall 2021 compare to normative growth expectations?

To what extent has the COVID-19 pandemic affected student achievement and growth in reading and math, and which students have been most affected? Using data from 6 million students in grades 3-8 who took MAP Growth assessments in reading and math, this brief examines how gains across the pandemic (fall 2019 to fall 2021) and student achievement in fall 2021 compare to pre-pandemic trends. This research provides insight to leaders working to support recovery.