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.

The American Rescue Plan provides $122 billion for COVID recovery in schools. With more than 40 state plans approved, how are districts collecting, monitoring, reporting and learning from the unprecedented interventions? What can districts do now to design and implement data collection processes that will shape collective learning? In this webinar, you will hear how district leaders and researchers are approaching this opportunity to alter life outcomes for generations.

Using achievement data from fall and spring of grades K-8 for 840,000 students in 8,800 public schools, this study provides novel evidence on how achievement and growth differ between rural and nonrural schools. Rural students start kindergarten slightly ahead of nonrural students but fall behind by middle school. The divergence is driven by larger summer losses for rural students. In both rural and nonrural schools, Black–White achievement gaps widen during the school year.

The four-day school week (4dsw) is growing in popularity, especially in rural areas across the western United States. RAND researchers conducted a study of the implementation and outcomes of the 4dsw in numerous districts across Idaho, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, as well as administrative data from these and other states. The analyses resulted in mixed findings, with small cost savings and high satisfaction for teachers, families, and students, but lower test scores related to the 4dsw. Given these mixed findings, communities are likely to make different choices about the 4dsw depending on their goals and the local context.