

Test score patterns across three COVID-19-impacted school years
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.
By: Megan Kuhfeld, James Soland, Karyn Lewis
Topics: Equity, COVID-19 & schools


Pathways of mathematics achievement in preschool: Examining executive function and task orientation
This study used longitudinal data from a sample of 467 preschoolers to examine (1) if children’s executive function (EF) skills at the beginning of pre-K predict growth in their mathematics achievement across the pre-K year, (2) whether growth in learning behaviors, specifically task orientation, mediate the associations between EF and mathematics achievement, and (3) if there are sex differences in these associations.
By: Tara Hofkens, Jessica Whittaker, Robert Pianta, Virginia Vitiello, Erik Ruzek, Arya Ansari
Topics: Early learning, Math & STEM


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.
By: Emily Morton


The COVID-19 school year: Learning and recovery across 2020-2021
This study uses test scores from 4.9 million U.S. students in Grades 3 through 8 to examine the academic disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic by modeling student achievement trends prior to and during the pandemic, with particular focus on growth in 2020-2021.
By: Megan Kuhfeld, James Soland, Karyn Lewis, Erik Ruzek, Angela Johnson
Topics: Equity, COVID-19 & schools


This study compared the test taking disengagement of students taking a remotely administered an adaptive interim assessment in spring 2020 with their disengagement on the assessment administered in-school during fall 2019.
By: Steven Wise, Megan Kuhfeld, John Cronin
Topics: Equity, Innovations in reporting & assessment, School & test engagement


This study evaluates the effects of asking items throughout the passage (i.e., embedding items) to achieve a more precise measure of reading comprehension by removing barriers for students to demonstrate their understanding. Results showed a significant impact of embedding comprehension items within reading passages on the measurement of student achievement in comparison to answering items at the end of the passage.
By: Meg Guerreiro, Janice Johnson
Topics: Equity, Innovations in reporting & assessment, Reading & language arts


The instructional legacy of COVID-19: Teacher adaptation in response to the pandemic
This study investigated teacher adaptation to the changes in teaching conditions caused by the transition to distance learning in the COVID-19 pandemic.
By: Helena Connolly, Naina Abowd, Catherine C. Chase
Topics: COVID-19 & schools, Empowering educators