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, The widening achievement divide during COVID-19.

New research provides additional evidence of the uneven impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic showing that students’ math and reading test scores are more variable in spring 2022 than before the pandemic in part because the divide between high and low achievers has widened.

New NWEA research provides further evidence of the challenges that young learners are currently facing from the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

New research using longitudinal data provides evidence that deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students continue to build skills in math and reading throughout grades 2 to 8, challenging assumptions that DHH students’ skills plataeu in elementary grades.

 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.

This study uses test scores from 5.4 million U.S. students in Grades 3–8 to track changes in math and reading achievement across the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this Education Week blog, AIR and NWEA researchers share insights from their collaborative research on academic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what their work suggests about how much academic recovery students need .