The purpose of this technical appendix is to share more detailed results and describe the sample and methods used in the research included in Student achievement in 2021-22: Cause for hope and continued urgency.

New NWEA research finds signs of academic rebounding in the 2021-22 school year while simultaneously underscoring the sustained need for urgency in responding to the COVID-19 crisis.

School officials regularly use school-aggregate test scores to monitor school performance and make policy decisions. In this report, RAND researchers investigate one specific issue that may contaminate utilization of COVID-19–era school-aggregate scores and result in faulty comparisons with historical and other proximal aggregate scores: changes in school composition over time. To investigate this issue, they examine data from NWEA’s MAP Growth assessments, interim assessments used by states and districts during the 2020–2021 school year.

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.

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 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?

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.