Technical brief
Technical Brief Recovery still elusive: 2023-24 student achievement highlights persistent achievement gaps and a long road ahead
July 2024
By: Karyn Lewis, Megan Kuhfeld
Description
Based on data from 2023-24, this brief shares several key findings, including:
- Growth during 2023-24 fell short of pre-pandemic trends in nearly all grades. This continues the trend of stalled progress observed in the previous school year and indicates that pandemic recovery remains elusive.
- The gap between pre-COVID and COVID test score averages widened in 2023-24 in nearly all grades, by an average of 36% in reading and 18% in math.
- The average student will need the equivalent of 4.8 additional months of schooling to catch up in reading and 4.3 months in math. These estimates are similar to last year for math, and larger for reading.
- Comparing across race/ethnicity groups, growth for all students lagged pre-pandemic trends in 2023-24. Marginalized students remain the furthest from recovery.
Topics: COVID-19 & schools, Equity, Growth
Associated Research
Related Topics
Do high flyers maintain their altitude?
In the visualizations in this exhibit, you can compare the performance and growth of various groups of high achievers to that of their peers over multiple years.
By: Yun Xiang, Michael Dahlin, John Cronin, Robert Theaker, Sarah Durant
Topics: Equity, High-growth schools & practices
A level playing field: College readiness standards
Some of our assumptions about the growth and performance of students from high-poverty schools relative to their peers from wealthier schools may be challenged in this data gallery, where you can explore how school poverty level interacts with student growth, college readiness, and college access.
By: Michael Dahlin, Beth Tarasawa
Topics: Equity, College & career readiness
A level playing field: College readiness standards
This study examines the academic growth of 35,000 elementary and middle school students in 31 statesāall of them high achievers within their own schoolsāover a three-year period.
By: Michael Dahlin, Beth Tarasawa
Topics: Equity, College & career readiness
Do high flyers maintain their altitude? Performance trends of top students
In this study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, achievement trends from NWEAās longitudinal growth database were used to track students who scored at or above the 90th percentile on this assessment in order to see if they maintained their high achievement.
By: Yun Xiang, Michael Dahlin, John Cronin, Robert Theaker, Sarah Durant
Topics: Equity, High-growth schools & practices
What does equity and accessibility look like within assessment?
Creating tests and items from the beginning with Universal Design for Learning in mind, removing barriers by adding alt-tags, and incorporating more culturally rich materials are all steps NWEA is doing to improve our equity for all students.
By: Elizabeth Barker
Topics: Equity, Accessibility
NWEA promotes accessibility in assessment with release of image description guidelines
Image descriptions are important to make computer-based assessments accessible to students using assistive technology (AT) devices, such as screen readers and refreshable braille displays. NWEA, with support from the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), has created guidelines for describing many variations of images, charts, and graphics targeted specifically to the disciplines of reading, language usage, science, and mathematics.
By: Elizabeth Barker
Topics: Equity, Accessibility
A longitudinal study of reading growth for students with visual impairments
This study compares reading growth for students with visual impairments with a nationally normed group of students from the general population using data from the NWEA MAP Growth assessment.
By: Beth Boroson, Elizabeth Barker, Xueming Li
Topics: Equity, Accessibility, Reading & language arts