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.

This report documents the norming study procedure used to produce the achievement and growth user norms for English MAP Reading Fluency Foundational Skills.

The MAP Growth theory of action describes key features of MAP Growth and its position in a comprehensive assessment system.

This study compares estimation of symptom networks with Bayesian GLASSO- and Horseshoe priors to estimation using the frequentist GLASSO using extensive simulations.

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.