Poverty and Inequality

Financial literacy in school: Skills for the 21st century

Olivia Peterkin — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 19:56:43 +0000

Financial literacy in school: Skills for the 21st century Olivia Peterkin Mon, 03/10/2025 - 12:56

Education Policy | Poverty and Inequality | Students

In this episode of School’s In, GSB Professor Annamaria Lusardi discusses what financial skills are most useful for young people, and a new bill that is working to get students where they need to be.

March 20, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

Last year, California became the 26th state to make coursework in personal finance a graduation requirement for high school students, with the passage of Assembly Bill 2927.

But what does it mean for a young adult to be financially literate in America? And what role can schools play in preparing students for the world outside the classroom?

Annamaria Lusardi, a senior fellow at the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and professor of finance at �� Graduate School of Business (GSB), says that making personal finance mandatory is a step in the right direction.

“When you look at the proportion of young people who are financially literate, we see that it's disproportionately the white male college-educated young people who are financially literate. And so by making this course mandatory and accessible to everybody, we can give this access to those students who otherwise would not have it,” said Lusardi, who is also the faculty director of the Initiative for Financial Decision-Making, a collaboration between the GSB, the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research, and ��’s economics department.

“One of the most important determinants of financial literacy is, unfortunately, socioeconomic status, so we need to have it in the school to provide access to everybody,” she said.

Lusardi joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on School’s In as they discuss the complexities of financial decision making and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)' s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a financial literacy test for 15-year-olds.

They also discuss financial literacy’s impact on well-being and wealth.

“Financial literacy is linked to a variety of behaviors that bring happiness,” Lusardi said. “We don’t save just to save, we save to achieve an objective like sending our kids to college, having a secure retirement, or taking a trip. So it is that knowledge that allows us to better navigate the financial system, and therefore be able to be savvy in making financial decisions.”

“I always say (my personal finance course) is a happiness project,” she said. “It teaches you the things that are important so you can make the decision that allows you to achieve some of the objectives that you have.”

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Transcript

Annamaria Lusardi (00:00):

Financial literacy is an essential skill to thrive in the 21st century.

Denise Pope (00:10):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. From early education to lifelong development, we dive into trends, innovations and challenges facing learners of all ages. I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at ��'s Graduate School of [00:00:30] Education and co-founder of Challenge Success.

Dan Schwartz (00:33):

And I'm Dan Schwartz. I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and the Faculty Director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Denise Pope (00:43):

Together we bring you expert perspectives and conversations to help you stay curious, inspired, and informed.

(00:52):

Hi Dan.

Dan Schwartz (00:53):

Hi Denise.

Denise Pope (00:54):

Dan, today we are talking about something I think really important like a life skill, [00:01:00] financial literacy, and specifically financial literacy for high school students.

Dan Schwartz (01:06):

Right. So it turns out that a lot of people never learned about credit card debt accumulation or how to figure out are the terms of this loan good or even what's inflation due to the amount of money you have. So did you learn these things? Do you know about these things?

Denise Pope (01:24):

My god, I don't even know what I don't know. Right? I did not take financial literacy in high school or college. [00:01:30] I'm sort of embarrassed. I didn't even take econ in college. Did you?

Dan Schwartz (01:34):

No. My goal in life was to get enough money that I could hire someone to do my finances for me.

Denise Pope (01:41):

That's good.

Dan Schwartz (01:41):

Thank you.

Denise Pope (01:42):

That seems very financial literate.

Dan Schwartz (01:44):

I'm still waiting. But yes, that is a sort of type of literacy. So today we are very fortunate to have Professor Annamaria Lusardi who's speaking with us today. She's a professor of finance at the �� Graduate School of Business and she's one of the world's most cited [00:02:00] authors on financial literacy and she's advised the Office of Financial Education at US Treasury. So she's here to help us understand a new bill that's been signed in California that requires high school students to complete a course on financial literacy before they graduate.

(02:16):

So welcome Annamaria.

Annamaria Lusardi (02:20):

Very happy to be here today.

Dan Schwartz (02:22):

Good. So here's the first question. What counts as financial literacy and how did you decide that's [00:02:30] a thing?

(02:30):

Well, that's what people need to learn, I know income and expenses, am I done?

Annamaria Lusardi (02:37):

Well, you are not done yet. Financial literacy includes a few more topics, and this is what we hope also this new law will establish what we need to have in the schools are a set of knowledge and skills that we think define financial literacy. And we know those because for [00:03:00] example, already in 2012, the Program for International Student Assessment already had added financial literacy into the list of topics, at 15 years old need to know in order to participate to society. So it is a long and important list and it includes the many skills that young people need to have today.

Denise Pope (03:26):

I can only imagine because other countries always [00:03:30] outscore us on the PISA in so many other ways that we were probably really outscored on this in terms of the US. Is this, are we way down there? Is this part of the problem?

Annamaria Lusardi (03:41):

We are not down there in a sense that we are at the OECD average and we have been mostly at the OECD average. But this is not a good score.

Denise Pope (03:51):

Being average is not good, right? Being average is not okay.

Annamaria Lusardi (03:54):

Being average is not good. The US is the country with the most advanced financial [00:04:00] markets. And so we need to do and we need to do better. But also what the result shows is that it's not because you are born in a country with well-developed financial markets that you acquire financial literacy by yourself. That's a language you need to learn and you need to speak because nobody is going to explain it to you. And so if you are going to make financial decisions, that's the language or that's the term you are going to face.

Dan Schwartz (04:27):

What are some of the other terms? Stock, a mutual [00:04:30] fund, compounding interest would be ...

Annamaria Lusardi (04:32):

Absolutely. Inflation is another word we have used. And of course, for example, insurances, managing risk. So making a budget, managing expenses, planning for the future, these are some of the words we have used.

Dan Schwartz (04:49):

So this financial literacy course could be very intense mathematically. So risk diversification is an evaluation of probabilities, right?

Annamaria Lusardi (04:59):

So [00:05:00] when I teach personal finance at ��, we have a course here, we use a bit of math and I think students appreciate it because we also have a lot of students from the sciences and from computer science.

(05:13):

But I have to say you can teach personal finance with very little math. And how can you explain risk diversification? You use this example, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. You try to explain how growth can really be very fast, can be nonlinear. [00:05:30] But I've done the course in very simple ways and with very little math. I also teach one unit course during the summer. So you can do it with as little math as possible because we know that math can be an obstacle for many students to take this course.

(05:47):

And also I want to repeat, many people think while we teach math and therefore it is like teaching personal finance, but personal finance is its own topics. For example, you need to know the rule and regulation. [00:06:00] You need to know where it is useful to get information and so on.

Denise Pope (06:05):

I feel like I should hire Anna right now to teach me these things without math. Like compound interest, when you say compound interest, literally my heart starts going ... I mean I know to pay off my credit card every month because there is this thing that if I don't pay, it's actually way more money and it gets more. But again, I don't know the math. So what do you think about that?

Annamaria Lusardi (06:28):

I think I'm going to have you in my classes [00:06:30] as well because you have already explained in simple way many of the things we tell to the students. We try to explain what the concept is. We can explain it in simple ways.

(06:41):

One of the things I tell my students in the first class is you are going to learn the language of finance, but we start with plain English and we build that knowledge up so people learn little by little. And then we explain this concept in pure English. Sometimes we put [00:07:00] some of the formula on the whiteboard or the blackboard or on the slides, but we also explain it in very simple way. We explain the intuition behind it, things like the interest rate, which is how much your wealth can grow.

(07:13):

And so given that the interest rate is so high and it compounds, it builds over the interest, then it's really important, as you've said, to pay off your credit card quickly, or it is very useful to start saving as soon as possible. [00:07:30] So you can explain these things in simple ways.

Dan Schwartz (07:33):

I agree. I think it is important for people to learn these things.

(07:37):

So the military has very sophisticated equipment, and the first move was to train people to handle the sophisticated equipment. And that turns out to be very consuming. So what they did is they just made it easier to use the equipment. So here's an Obama-era law on credit card statements that they include [00:08:00] sort of the cost that you would pay, but if you paid the minimum amount, they show you how much it would cost you over like 15, 30 years. So why can't we just do that for everything? Just make it simpler for people?

Annamaria Lusardi (08:12):

Yeah. We can and we should, but it's not enough. It's not enough. We need also now for example, to make decisions about our pension, our responsibility to save and to invest our pension has been shifting upon us. And these are not simple [00:08:30] decisions. Also, decisions are interrelated. I have to decide not just how much to save for my pension, but also whether I want to buy a house and the down payment whether to pay off my credit card. And so if you simplify one decision, I still have to make decisions across different options.

(08:51):

The financial market, the world has become much more complex than in the past. So I cannot I think stop [00:09:00] that complexity. And I think this is what happened also for education. We need to increase and have a higher level of education because of the changes that we see around us. And this is precisely why we need to add this additional topic. The world around us are required to have that knowledge. We are not able to operate under just simplifying some of those decisions.

Denise Pope (09:29):

That is a great answer. [00:09:30] Really appreciate that.

Dan Schwartz (09:38):

So Denise, I don't know how you learned financial literacy 'cause you never took the econ course, but maybe it's there. So my question is what have you done to help your kids become financially literate?

Denise Pope (09:49):

Oh, that's a very good question. We have talked as a family about savings. And I know this sounds crazy, but early [00:10:00] on, so I was always told, don't pay your kids for chores. Okay? Stick with me on this. Don't pay your kids for chores because they should be doing them out of the kindness of their heart, out of being part of a family. This is what we do to help others. But I was told you should give your kids an allowance because giving them an allowance not tied to anything in particular, but giving them an allowance helps them learn financial literacy.

(10:28):

And so one of the things that we were told [00:10:30] is to have something where you give them an allowance that they get to spend a little bit, but they also get to save a little bit. And then also think about when we give to charity like helping others. So we get together right around Thanksgiving, we figure out where we want to put some charitable funds and we would always include the kids in that and they would put, when they were little, it was like I can give 25 cents, but you make a big deal out of it. So that's what we did in my family.

Dan Schwartz (10:58):

Wow.

Denise Pope (10:59):

What? How about- What?

Dan Schwartz (11:00):

[00:11:00] Nothing. I didn't give an allowance. He would have to ask for money. But then in college his roommate was the world's best online poker player.

Denise Pope (11:11):

Oh, well that helps.

Dan Schwartz (11:12):

And that's where he learned it all, right, from this guy who really understood sort of taking bets and risk and where do you invest, so.

Denise Pope (11:24):

Well, we need him to teach the financial literacy classes.

Dan Schwartz (11:28):

If I can just point out, [00:11:30] even though I did nothing, he's now a certified public accountant. So I don't know where it happened. It wasn't me. I didn't give him a credit card or something like that and say, "You have to pay off your debt, kid." I don't know where he got it.

Denise Pope (11:43):

Although that is interesting because that's the other thing that we were told, is have them have a credit card early on that you're a cosigner on 'cause they don't have enough to get their own, but they will learn. And then that's how you teach them about always pay off your credit card in full.

(11:59):

My [00:12:00] dad taught me that. My dad taught me how to balance. I used to have to balance my checkbook to the penny because that's what my dad taught me. I mean literally to the point I would just go through. Remember in the old days you'd have your checks and you'd go through and you'd check them off and see. Yeah, that's what I was taught.

Dan Schwartz (12:17):

I've never done any of that. I just look at my bank account and I say, "I'm not broke. It's okay."

Denise Pope (12:23):

It's okay.

Dan Schwartz (12:25):

That's about as far as I get, but ...

Denise Pope (12:27):

I will say this though, we do have students [00:12:30] who will think like, "Oh, I still have checks in my checkbook." I'm dating myself. "I must have money in my account." Right?

Dan Schwartz (12:38):

Ooh, I like that mis- I like that one.

Denise Pope (12:40):

There's problems. There's problems. It sounds like we do really need to invest in financial literacy, and the more, the better at this point.

(12:52):

Okay, so you have me convinced, Annamaria. We need this. Talk to me a little bit more about the bill itself [00:13:00] and what it's requiring and why high school and what this all means.

Annamaria Lusardi (13:04):

Yeah. So the new bill requires a semester-long personal finance education course to graduate. So the schools have to offer the course by the 2027 and '28 school year and make it a graduation requirement by 2030 and '31. So it has to be a standalone personal finance [00:13:30] course. And that's I think what makes it unique, and California will become the 26th state to require this standalone personal finance course to graduate.

Dan Schwartz (13:44):

So Denise, do you think students are going to love it? I mean it's so practical and relevant.

Denise Pope (13:49):

I mean, I think it's to be determined, right? How is it taught? Is it taught in the way that Anna just did with me? Yes. Can we clone Anna and send her out to every high school in [00:14:00] the California? That would certainly help. I worry, and I can just tell you from my own experience, sometimes these classes get the reputation of the dumb math class. So you're not taking algebra one. You're not taking algebra two. You're in the dumb math class.

(14:16):

What I love about requiring everyone to take it is I think that that stigma is going to go away. And personal finance is not going to be considered sort of math for dummies, for lack of a better word, but it's going to be like, "Oh wait, this is really [00:14:30] important. This is how I buy a car. This really affects my future."

(14:34):

And I will say this, the fact that it became a full semester is really incredible because I've seen other things passed – there has to be some mental health education – that are short, maybe unit-long type things or you kind of cover it in, it's a checklist and you can check it off. But to make this a full semester long class shows you just how important the government thinks it [00:15:00] is for us to learn this. So well done, well done, Anna.

Annamaria Lusardi (15:05):

Well, I think the same. And I want to say judging from the students here at ��, I know these are not high school students, but when the course was first offered here, 362 students signed up.

Denise Pope (15:19):

Wow.

Annamaria Lusardi (15:20):

It became the most popular course within economics. And even now that we are teaching it, I'm teaching it also in the summer. We have had more than 400 students during [00:15:30] the spring and the summer term and we had to raise the cap four times. It's very, very popular among the students. So hopefully it doesn't have that stigma.

(15:40):

I actually want to mention something that people don't mention enough, which is the importance of making this course mandatory is because we made it accessible to every student. So when you look at the proportion of people, young people who are financially literate, and I've studied [00:16:00] for example, younger people but older than the high schooler, we see that it's disproportionately the white male college-educated young people who are financially literate. And so by making this course mandatory and accessible to everybody, we can give this access to those students who otherwise would not have it.

(16:24):

Our study finds something really interesting, which is that if you look at these young people that [00:16:30] have studied 23 to 27 years old, we can link that financial literacy to the wealth of the parents when they were growing up, when these people were 12 to 17, and in particular, if the family had retirement savings and stocks. In other words, young people today learn these topics at the dinner table, but only if they come from families which are well-off and which are college-educated.

(16:58):

We see this in the PISA data [00:17:00] as well. One of the most important determinant of financial literacy is unfortunately socioeconomic status. We need to have it in the school to provide access to everybody.

Denise Pope (17:14):

So important, so important.

Dan Schwartz (17:16):

I think that finding is not surprising, but it's incredibly important.

Denise Pope (17:20):

Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (17:20):

If you don't have money in your household, you don't spend a lot of time talking about your mutual funds.

Annamaria Lusardi (17:25):

Right. And also money becomes a source of anxiety, of worries. [00:17:30] We see this in the adult population as well. And also money is taboo. And so we don't discuss this easily and this is why eventually people will never learn about it. But it's better to have this knowledge before you make financial decisions than after and learning in school rather than learning by mistakes.

Denise Pope (17:55):

Totally. And that actually makes me think of this whole concept of money as taboo as a whole, [00:18:00] right? No one talks about how much they make. You're not supposed to say these things in public and at dinner parties or whatnot. It's just mystifying to me because another thing that I read that you said is it's not necessarily wealth that is connected to happiness, it's actually financial literacy connected to happiness.

(18:18):

Can you say a little bit more about that? I think it plays into what we're talking about right now.

Annamaria Lusardi (18:22):

Yes. What we say and the reason why we make the statement is that we have seen that financial literacy [00:18:30] is linked to a variety of behavior that is bringing that happiness. I would say that financial well-being, that financial security. We don't at the end save just to save. We want to save to achieve an objective, to, for example, send kids to college, to be able to have a secure retirement, to be able to do the things we would like to do, maybe take a trip, maybe help others. And so is that, I think knowledge that [00:19:00] today is so fundamental. Every decision we have to make is relatively complex. So it’s that knowledge that allows us to navigate better the financial system and therefore be able to be savvy in making the financial decisions.

(19:18):

I always ask my students in the first class what the course is about, what they think the course is about. And most of the students, I have to say – similar to I think what the [00:19:30] average person thinks – they think the course is about investing because of personal finance, you feel like, well, it has to be about investing. And I always say, no, this course is a happiness project. It teaches you the things that are important so you can make the decision that allows you to achieve some of the objectives that you have.

Denise Pope (19:54):

Well, there's your hook for high schoolers right there, especially given the mental health issues of kids right now [00:20:00] and the state of economy and the real wealth gap that we're seeing, right?

Annamaria Lusardi (20:05):

Yeah. Think how daunting it can be for a high school student today to think about a decision to go to college and how to finance that education. So that in itself is a complex decision. So right there, young people have to make important and consequential decisions very early on.

Dan Schwartz (20:26):

So I want to get back to one of the findings that [00:20:30] I saw, which I found kind of stunning. And so the claim is that 30 to 40% of differences in net worth are due to financial literacy. So that's pretty stunning. And I'm sort of thinking maybe the causal direction's the other way, that if you have a lot of money, you become more financially literate. So tell me, because 30 to 40% based on financial literacy is huge.

Annamaria Lusardi (20:56):

Yeah. This is actually part of a study that we did, but like [00:21:00] you were suggesting, we actually argue that financial literacy can also be an investment and that people who have a lot to gain from financial literacy will potentially invest more in financial literacy. And this is actually what we see as well in the data, that there is a little bit that endogeneity as well, as you have correctly indicated.

(21:25):

But our result at the end is indeed stunning and I think [00:21:30] is very much in line with, I think even a simple example. Suppose as we do, we both have a PhD, but I invest in the stock at age 30 and you don't invest in the stock market. 30, 40 years later, we are going to look very different just because of that decision. And that decision is often very much led by financial literacy. So financial literacy can really influence our wealth [00:22:00] much more than it influences our income.

Denise Pope (22:03):

I mean, I do want to point out though, you have to have money to invest in the first place. So if you're constantly living paycheck to paycheck, that's not even a reality for you. Right?

Annamaria Lusardi (22:14):

Right. But in our story as well, financial literacy helps in smoothing some of those shocks. So financial literacy is not just to accumulate for retirement, it's also to accumulate to smooth some of those shocks that [00:22:30] you might have. And so that ability, for example, to have a buffer stock of savings, putting aside a little and particularly early on if you can, is going to bring a lot in the long term.

(22:45):

I myself have to say, have regrets of not having invested and invested earlier on, for example, in this type of tax favor asset like a Roth IRA that really allows people [00:23:00] to grow in their wealth very early on. So there is really a lot we can learn and we can benefit from the financial market, the opportunity offered by the government and the employer, but we have to be aware of it and take advantage of them. And this is what financial literacy does.

Dan Schwartz (23:18):

So here's a complicated financial literacy issue that I had. So I had a job before I went back to PhD and I liquidated all my retirement to pay for my doctoral studies. [00:23:30] And so now I'm sitting here thinking, "Should I have left it? Would I be happier if I had not liquidated my retirement, which was age 30, or was my investment in a college education, advanced college education better?" I decided to get the PhD.

Annamaria Lusardi (23:49):

It's another investment I think you have chosen, but again, I don't know to know what is best. And I think that's also what we normally say, right? It depends [00:24:00] on you, what your decision are and what your knowledge is. But this could have potentially been a better investment because you have invested in education that has brought, I'm sure a very satisfying career and the things you wanted to achieve. So that's what money is for. That's the main lesson of financial literacy, use money for what is best for you.

Dan Schwartz (24:26):

So Denise, I liquidated my retirement so I could reach the [00:24:30] culmination of doing School's In with you.

Denise Pope (24:31):

I was just going to say-

Dan Schwartz (24:33):

That's how it cashed out.

Denise Pope (24:33):

You wouldn't be there if you hadn't have done that. So of course it was the right decision. Right?

(24:38):

Okay, as we wrap up, Anna, what's sort of one takeaway that you want people to get out of the show today?

Annamaria Lusardi (24:44):

The takeaway is that financial literacy is an essential skill to thrive in the 21st century. I am quoting the title of the first report of the Program for International Student Assessment [00:25:00] by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or the OECD, who added financial literacy into PISA already in 2012. It recognized that that's a very important skill. And so my suggestion to young people is, while you are in school, take this course if it is offered. My suggestion to parents is talk about money to your children as soon as possible when the Tooth Fairy comes.

Denise Pope (25:30):

[00:25:30] Yes.

Annamaria Lusardi (25:31):

And my suggestion to an adult person is to try to acquire this knowledge because it's a good investment for the future.

Denise Pope (25:39):

I love that. Can I just say the Tooth Fairy, on that topic, talk about inflation. We gave our kids maybe a quarter. Maybe my third kid got up to a dollar a tooth. I hear it's like 20 bucks a tooth these days. Talk about ...

Annamaria Lusardi (25:54):

Inflation has gone up. We need to adjust that little money, right? In particular, remember inflation [00:26:00] was 8%, so please adjust the money accordingly.

Denise Pope (26:04):

I love it.

(26:04):

Dan, any last words?

Dan Schwartz (26:06):

Well, I think the answer is you need to explain to your children why they should put it in the piggy bank.

Denise Pope (26:11):

Instead of spending it on candy.

Dan Schwartz (26:13):

And you add 3% to the piggy bank every year.

Denise Pope (26:15):

Exactly. Nice.

Annamaria Lusardi (26:17):

So you can see and they can see how much it grows.

Dan Schwartz (26:17):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (26:20):

I love it. I love it.

(26:21):

Well, thank you so much Annamaria for being here. We learned so much. I personally learned a lot and I know our listeners did too. Thank all of you for joining [00:26:30] this episode of School's In. Be sure to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (26:38):

I'm Dan Schwartz. I will go back and look at my investments this evening.

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Faculty and Research

Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope

New research reveals striking variations in pandemic recovery among U.S. school districts

Carrie Spector — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 20:02:46 +0000

New research reveals striking variations in pandemic recovery among U.S. school districts

Carrie Spector Mon, 02/10/2025 - 12:02

A new report by �� and Harvard researchers provides a uniquely detailed picture of academic gains and losses in thousands of U.S. school districts. (Photo: Allison Shelley for EDUimages)

K-12 | Poverty and Inequality | Race and Equity

An analysis by �� and Harvard researchers finds widening achievement gaps but also pockets of success, including high-poverty districts regaining pre-pandemic achievement levels.

February 11, 2025

By Carrie Spector

A new report by researchers at �� and Harvard finds that while the average U.S. student still lags behind pre-pandemic achievement levels in reading and math, students in a number of school districts across the country have regained the ground they lost in both subjects.

The analysis, which provides exclusive data on district-level changes in student achievement from 2019 to 2024, identifies 102 medium and large districts now performing above pre-pandemic levels in both math and reading, including high-poverty communities in Louisiana and Alabama.

Despite scattered bright spots, the researchers found that socioeconomic and other disparities in achievement have continued to grow. The highest-income districts nationwide were almost four times as likely to recover as the poorest districts, and districts enrolling the highest proportions of Black and Hispanic students have seen bigger declines in test scores since 2019 than predominantly white and more affluent districts.

Even within communities, Black and Hispanic students lost more ground than their white peers in the same district.

“There’s enormous variation in how test scores have changed over the last five years, and the overall decline masks a pernicious inequality,” said Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University (EOP), who co-led the analysis. “Test scores have declined far more in middle- and low-income communities than in wealthy ones.”

The researchers also investigated the impact of federal pandemic aid on academic recovery, finding that the funds helped to prevent larger losses in the highest-poverty districts.

The findings were released on Feb. 11 as part of the Education Recovery Scorecard, a collaboration between researchers at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the Center for Education Policy and Research (CEPR) at Harvard.

GSE Professor Sean Reardon

Mapping trends in thousands of school districts

The Education Recovery Scorecard uses data from the �� Education Data Archive (SEDA), a national database built by the EOP that includes test scores and demographic information from 2009 to 2024 for students in every public school district in the United States. SEDA, which has been publicly available online since 2016, is used by researchers and policymakers to study patterns and trends across the country and by race, gender, and socioeconomic conditions.

With SEDA data, the Education Recovery Scorecard delivers a uniquely detailed picture of academic gains and losses for thousands of individual school districts across the country. The analysis builds on data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), widely known as the “nation’s report card,” which measures progress at a state level and for 26 large urban school districts.

The Education Recovery Scorecard provides a higher-resolution picture, mapping trends in more than 8,000 school districts nationwide. It allows users to compare progress in one district with that of another, even if the districts are in different states and use different tests and proficiency standards.

A key challenge in comparing performance among U.S. students nationwide is that all states use different tests and standards to define proficiency, which can change even within a state from year to year. By aligning annual statewide test results with scores from the biennial NAEP, Reardon’s team at the EOP established a common metric — in the form of grade-level equivalents — to compare student performance across states and over time.

For the Education Recovery Scorecard, the researchers used SEDA data from 43 states (the remaining states were left out for various reasons, such as low participation rates on state tests or inadequate data reporting). The states included in this analysis capture roughly 35 million students in grades 3 through 8, almost 80 percent of those enrolled in U.S. public schools.

“There’s enormous variation in how test scores have changed over the last five years,
and the overall decline masks a pernicious inequality.”

Sean Reardon

Professor, �� Graduate School of Education
Faculty Director, The Educational Opportunity Project at �� University

Widening achievement gaps

As of Spring 2024, the average U.S. student remained nearly half a grade level behind 2019 scores in both math and reading, the researchers found. But “the declines were not visited equally upon all school districts,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research.

For instance, between 2019 and 2024, the difference in average scores between students in districts with the lowest and highest proportions of Black students increased by 17 percent. The gap between students in high- and low-poverty districts also increased, by about 11 percent.

“That’s a sizable growth in the disparity between districts serving different populations of kids,” Reardon said.

Also notable, he said, was a sharp change in gender gaps over the past five years. “For a decade or so before the pandemic, girls and boys in these grades had basically equal math scores on NAEP,” said Reardon. “But since 2019, girls have fallen about a third of a grade level behind.” This trend is pervasive not only throughout the United States but globally, he said.

The researchers continued their 2024 investigation into the impact of federal pandemic aid on student achievement, which indicated that these dollars were contributing to the recovery and helping to narrow achievement gaps. In the 2025 Education Recovery Scorecard, based on more recent data, they report that federal relief funds aided the recovery in the highest poverty districts, boosting achievement in both math and reading on average by one-tenth of a grade level.

How districts allocated the money made a difference, they noted. For instance, in California, which maintained comparatively detailed spending data, student achievement grew more in districts that spent greater amounts on academic interventions such as tutoring or summer school.

The researchers also studied the increase in chronic absenteeism and its possible impact on the rate of academic recovery. Districts at all socioeconomic levels have seen a rise in absenteeism since the pandemic, with larger increases in higher-poverty districts. The researchers said the data indicate that districts with high rates of absenteeism experienced slower recovery, but the full extent of the impact is still unclear.

‘The rescue phase is over’

The Education Recovery Scorecard also offers recommendations for educators, policymakers, and researchers going forward.

“The rescue phase is over. The federal relief dollars are gone,” said Thomas Kane, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and faculty director of CEPR, who co-authored the report. “It is time to pivot from short-term recovery to longer-term challenges.”

First, said Kane, states and districts should dedicate their own funds or funds they control to continue “catch-up” interventions like tutoring and summer learning. Second, community leaders — including mayors and employers — should join schools in working to lower absenteeism.

“This is one of the few things that folks outside of schools can be doing to help right now,” Kane said, suggesting efforts such as organizing public awareness campaigns, supporting field trips and other extracurricular activities to draw kids to school, and addressing transportation challenges that might keep students from getting to school.

He also advised teachers to keep parents informed if their child is not achieving at grade level. “Parents aren't going to sign up for summer learning, or ask for a tutor in school, or agree to an increase in the school year if they're under the impression that everything's fine.”

Finally, the report calls for a concerted effort to study literacy interventions to determine their impact. Most states have implemented various reforms in recent years, but nationally, reading test scores on average continue to decline. The report urges research across states and districts to better assess the effectiveness of different approaches now underway.

Additional collaborators on this project include Erin Fahle, Andrew Ho, Ben Shear, Jie Min, Jim Saliba, Jiyeon Shim, Sadie Richardson, Sofia Wilson, Julia Paris, Demetra Kalogrides, Ann Owens, Ishita Panda, Amelia Bloom, Nahian Haque, and Jackson Kinsella (Educational Opportunity Project); Daniel Dewey, Victoria Carbonari, and Dean Kaplan (Center for Education Policy Research); and Douglas Staiger (Dartmouth College).

The research was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin and Griffin Catalyst, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 

Research Stories

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Faculty mentioned in this article: sean reardon

Supporting students: Housing, health, and education

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 18:28:40 +0000

Supporting students: Housing, health, and education Olivia Peterkin Wed, 12/18/2024 - 10:28

Poverty and Inequality | Race and Equity | Research and Practice

On this episode, Amy Gerstein, executive director of ��’s John W. Gardner Center, discusses the effects of unstable housing on students.

December 19, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

From effective pedagogy and group work, to creating a safe and engaging learning environment, many teachers and educational leaders are well-versed in how to foster student success within school walls.

However, what happens outside those walls has an equal, if not larger, impact on educational performance, begging the question — how do schools support students outside of the classroom?

“It is imperative for schools of education to be doing research on communities,” said Amy Gerstein, executive director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities. “Schools don’t do it alone and we need to be more intentional about breaking down silos and making connections all for the same goals of improving the lives of youth and trying to really address and create equitable outcomes.”

In her role, Gerstein directs the center in its mission to conduct research that advances equity for young people and their communities, while working with nonprofits and community members across sectors.

“We’re always studying youth who are in dependent care, multilingual learners, foster youth, youth who have had challenges with discipline or with their health, and those who are in need of special education services” she said. “All of those groups of young people tend to perform poorly, have lower educational outcomes in that they are less likely to graduate from high school, they’re less likely to be prepared to go to college, and less likely to have strong attendance. And then when we looked at this population of youth who are in unstable housing, it’s really dramatically worse.”

Gerstein joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on School’s In as they discuss how schools can identify students in unstable housing, train staff to support those students sensitively, and partner with community organizations to meet needs.

She also talks about the “community school” model, where resources are centralized around school’s as a hub in the community.

“If you’re hungry, unhoused, have concerns about your immigration status, need a job, or need to learn English, all of these kinds of services and issues can be identified and addressed by the school having formal partnerships with community-based organizations that provide it,” Gerstein said.

“[The community school model is] great for making sure that the whole child and the whole family is being helped.”

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to School’s In on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

Amy Gerstein (00:00):

I think there's a very large stigma associated with this. So who wants to declare that they're struggling in this way? No one.

Denise Pope (00:09):

Today we're diving into a topic that's often overlooked but has a huge impact on student success, how schools can support students facing unstable housing. These are challenges that go far beyond the classroom, but they have a huge effect on educational outcomes.

Dan Schwartz (00:25):

That's right. There are a lot of things that happen outside of school that impact students' performance in school, but this has to be one of the biggest, and schools can't handle this alone. It really takes a whole community effort.

Denise Pope (00:38):

That's right. And that's why we're really excited to bring in an expert who's leading the way on how schools and communities can work together to help these students in need. It's going to be a really important conversation. Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning. Each episode, we dive into the latest trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners. I'm Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer at �� Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success. And I'm with my co-host, Dan Schwartz, Dean of �� GSE and Faculty Director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Dan Schwartz (01:19):

We brought a foremost expert who's going to explain why it is imperative for schools of education to take a look at communities.

Denise Pope (01:28):

Yes, I'm excited for this conversation. So we have Amy Gerstein here who is the Executive Director of ��'s, John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities. It's built right into the name.

Dan Schwartz (01:41):

Right into the School of Education.

Denise Pope (01:43):

Right into the School of Education, and the Gardner Center has a rich history of partnering with schools to understand the factors that inhibit growth in students and communities, and the center uses research-based insights to advance equitable opportunities for youth. So Amy, thank you so much for being on the show and welcome.

Amy Gerstein (02:00):

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Denise Pope (02:02):

We're excited to have you here. And obviously you are someone who thinks that schools of education should study communities, and I know that one of the things that you've been doing among many studies is a recent study on youth who are either unhoused or in unstable housing, and to me that's very much looking at the community, right? So tell us how that came about and a little bit about the study.

Amy Gerstein (02:28):

Sure. So I think it is imperative for schools of education to be doing research on communities. And I want to say just as a word of background, that my whole career prior to coming to the Gardner Center was really squarely focused in education, in schools, in districts, and with foundations who were working with schools and districts, maybe institutions of higher ed, but I had not, until I came to the Gardner Center, really turned my lens outward to, oh, where school situated and why does that matter?

(03:08):

And a really important part of the whole founding of the Gardner Center was this notion that our work needs to be multi-sector, that schools don't do it alone, they never have, and we need to be more strategic and intentional about breaking down silos and making connections all for the same goals of improving the lives of youth and trying to really address and equitable outcomes for youth. So for us, that's a big grounding of who we are. So the study that we conducted was a county-wide study in San Mateo County to really look at the educational outcomes of youth who were experiencing homelessness or unstable housing. And there isn't a lot known about that. We had done a similar study in San Francisco a few years prior, but in this case we were looking to understand what are the educational outcomes of students who are in unstable housing.

Dan Schwartz (04:18):

Amy, is there any model in which their educational outcomes are better than students who have housing?

Amy Gerstein (04:24):

No.

Dan Schwartz (04:25):

I hate to say duh, but it can't be good, can it?

Amy Gerstein (04:30):

It's not only not good, it's the worst. We're always studying youth who are in dependent care, foster youth, or youth who have had challenges with discipline or with their health or who are in need of special education services or who are multilingual learners. All of those groups of young people tend to perform poorly, have lower educational outcomes in that they are less likely to graduate from high school, they're less likely to be prepared to go to college, and less likely to have strong attendance and so on.

(05:07):

And then when we looked at this population of youth who are in unstable housing, it's really dramatically worse. So for example, students who are experiencing unstable housing, and it's important that I kind of come back and define that, but students who are in that kind of situation are four times as likely as students who are in stable housing, they are four times as likely not to complete high school. That's a lot. They're five times as likely, all through, yeah, it's a lot, and five times as likely, elementary, middle, and high school, they're five times as likely as those peers who are in stable housing to be chronically absent. They're five times as likely to have out of school suspensions. So there's sort of a number of ways we can cut the data and also just their educational outcomes in terms of achievement are also much lower.

(06:09):

In other studies we have at times measured some of the social and emotional development issues, so we know there's potentially higher resilience among this population of students, which I think is a really exciting outcome. We were not able to do that, we did that in San Francisco, we were not able to do that in San Mateo County, mostly because the school districts don't collect those data. In San Francisco, they were collecting those data, so we could look at that, and we did that with Jelena Oberdovich. So we were able to talk about a few positive assets.

(06:45):

So just one more word on the unstable housing or the instability. So one of the challenges facing this population and facing communities writ large are different definitions of homelessness. So for example, from the federal level, that means what they call literally homeless, maybe sleeping in a car or being on the streets. In education, we use a different definition. This is federal as well, and it's the McKinney-Vento definition which means anyone in essentially unstable housing. So if you are, and that is defined as families that are doubled up. So we know around here, that was a very, it's a prominent way, very common for families to address this really crazy region that we're in terms of housing. And so that means 2, 3, 4 families in one unit. So that's considered unstable housing. If you're in a garage. There are any number of arrangements that are considered unstable.

(07:50):

And why that's important is because then they have access to resources if it's declared. So if we know that about young people, we can lean in with some resources. And when we did this study, 100% of the school districts, which was all the districts in the county, said, "We'll happily share these data, and you should know 100% these are an under count." So they said, "However bad it looks to you, it's really worse because we know there are more students experiencing unstable housing than have declared it on our books."

Denise Pope (08:28):

Is that because of shame? What causes someone to not declare it, especially this is preventing them from getting resources?

Amy Gerstein (08:37):

So this was a mixed method study. And so one of the reasons that we did qualitative research was to dig into this question because when every district is reporting this, we need to understand this. So I think there's a very large stigma associated with this. So who wants to declare that they're struggling in this way? No one. And a lot of the families are mixed status. They may be undocumented or may have members of the family that are undocumented. That's what I mean by mixed status. They're afraid. They're afraid to tell an official person at a school, even though their schools are sensitive places. They are protected, but they're afraid of that. So they're also afraid of having any, what is considered a public charge, so if you get some public services, if you get help from a community-based organization, a nonprofit, will that count against families who are trying to become legal residents in the country?

(09:40):

And for many years it was not considered a public charge to get these kinds of resources, but it became that way in 2016, actually 2017, and so that actually was really bad for this population. It's also who's watching? So this is again about breaking down the boundaries and the silos. Often, we've learned that it was the people in the front office, the school secretary, who was the first person likely to identify, "I've seen this kid wear the same clothes for six days." And so some districts were really thoughtful and trained the front office staff to first know how to identify but also think about how to approach them and do it in a way that was respectful and so on.

(10:38):

And often those folks in the front office actually live in the community. They speak the language of people who are living in the community, so they're actually great people to be able to do that if they're trained appropriately. And so that was one of the areas we learned from school districts that they just weren't attending to it because in many ways it just hadn't occurred to them that they need to.

Denise Pope (11:00):

I love that the front office staff can play that role and can be a force for good.

Dan Schwartz (11:09):

So we're a school of education. We need to decide the scope of our work. So where do we do research? What do we hire faculty in? What do we offer programs in for students? So this is a tough problem because education shapes all of life. You're a parent, you're a kid, you're in school all the time, and then you're a parent, and your kids are in school all the time. So education's shaping all that. At the same time, everything around life shapes education like where you live. So what should be the scope of the research of a school of education? Should it just be K-12 classrooms? Should it be teacher unions? Should it be early childhood? Should it be workforce development? Should it be communities and families? Should the GSE do work with communities like research and intervention? Or should schools of education just say, "Look, you deal with schools?"

Denise Pope (12:08):

It's actually a really interesting question. I know it's a bit facetious because I think my answer is going to be yes. Okay. Well-

Dan Schwartz (12:14):

Sorry. Sorry. The general question is quite interesting. The question of whether we should do research on communities, given that we have one of the foremost community researchers with us, is a little facetious. Yes.

Denise Pope (12:26):

Okay. But no, I think that first of all, I think it's a really important question because as you said, schools don't happen in a vacuum, and yet there's this phrase, we don't want to boil the ocean. Does that make sense to you?

Dan Schwartz (12:42):

You like that phrase?

Denise Pope (12:43):

This is why I like the phrase. I never heard the phrase before until, I don't know, about 15 years ago. And it just makes sense because you can't do everything. I feel like because of the way we know how schools operate and how people learn and that education happens over the course of a lifetime, it puts a really tough burden on schools of education and also kind of thinking like, well, what makes us different then from a school of social work who would also allegedly study communities and organizations? And where do those lines stop? And is it okay to blur it?

Dan Schwartz (13:16):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (13:16):

Right?

Dan Schwartz (13:18):

Yeah. And at some point you have to make a decision.

(13:25):

So Amy, quick question. I'm a school, and I discover my students in unstable housing. What kind of resources do I provide?

Amy Gerstein (13:35):

So that's a terrific question. So first of all, this is again about the importance of breaking down silos. It's critical for the schools and the district to have partnerships with community-based organizations that work with families like this. So that's one of the first things that'll happen is trying to connect the family with an organization like Life Moves that works to help folks in this kind of situation get into stable and what they consider permanent housing, which means not a shelter. So they really work at that. So immediately hooking them up with a community-based organization.

(14:14):

It also means making sure that transportation is not an issue. So oftentimes when a family is experiencing unstable housing that might go move in with a cousin who lives in a different town who lives in a different school district. Well, when the family is having so much instability, it really helps to keep the child in the same school district, same school. So assuring the child that that's going to happen and giving them support with transportation. Sometimes that literally means paying for taxis, it means bus passes, it means lots of different things, but a lot of the resources were around transportation.

(14:52):

It also means making sure they have the basics. Like do they need a school uniform? Do they need a backpack? Do they need notebooks? What kind of equipment do they need? And getting it to them with very little fanfare. And I think also making sure there are all these ways in which making sure they're on free and reduced, probably free lunch and other free meals, but also making sure that these little things that come up, field trips, yearbooks, that these young people are on a list that is known to just a few people because of the privacy issues, but that list makes sure that all these young people get what they like everyone else, they get a yearbook, they get tickets to the prom, they get to go on the field trip, and it's handled with respect. I think that one of the areas that we learned is that you can imagine schools and districts vary in their ability to carry out sharing of those resources.

Denise Pope (15:54):

You also mentioned earlier the front office would see the kid come to school in the same clothes. And I, a friend of mine, ran a study where Whirlpool donated washers and dryers to the school site, and it was done very respectfully that it was open to these families to have laundry facilities. It's like all of those things, you don't even think about, tickets to the prom and laundry. And I think it's all the more reason why we want these people to admit the situation so that they can get the resources. Right, Amy?

Amy Gerstein (16:28):

Right. That's exactly right. And one of the challenges with the front office staff in terms of training is making sure that they know a simple attestation is enough.

Denise Pope (16:38):

What does that mean? Walk us through that.

Amy Gerstein (16:40):

In other words, if a family is experiencing these kinds of challenges, all they have to do is let anyone in the building know, any school personnel like the school secretary and say, "We lost our apartment." And they don't need to bring an eviction notice. They don't need to bring proof of anything. But until and unless those school personnel are trained, they might ask for more. And we have heard that. That's one of the reasons there's an under count, or there's just the fear that they will have to provide proof, but all they have to do is say, "We lost our housing." That's it. And sign something saying this happened.

Dan Schwartz (17:21):

So I can see why training the school personnel is so important. All the resources are waiting. You have some beliefs that make it so you're not getting access to that. School personnel could help a lot.

Amy Gerstein (17:36):

They can help a lot. And often it's also the people who are providing the free lunch that are monitoring those lists. Those are the people who in some ways are really all knowing. They're the ones who know, who's experiencing unstable housing, who might be in dependent care, at foster youth, and there was real variability as to how much the people in those roles were actually communicating openly about this. We got to make sure this family is taken care of.

Dan Schwartz (18:08):

So it's a little tangential, but I would imagine the paraprofessionals in classrooms basically aids from the community know a lot if the kid says, "I'm homeless," is that enough to trigger or it has to come from the parent?

Denise Pope (18:22):

Oh, good question, Dan.

Amy Gerstein (18:24):

It is actually. That's considered a disclosure to a teacher or an aid, and that is also enough to start some of the resources flowing, and it has to be done really sensitively. I think the example of the washers and dryers is actually terrific. There's a local school district that they have 50%, 50, of their students are considered an unstable housing, and so the school district installed washers and dryers in every school.

Denise Pope (18:52):

Amazing.

Amy Gerstein (18:53):

There's also, again, a community-based organization that has what they call dignity wagons, that they're like trailers that pull up, and you can take a shower.

Denise Pope (19:03):

Wow. I mean, that's huge. That's amazing. I can imagine there'd be some issues though about who's going to the dignity? You have to be careful there too.

Amy Gerstein (19:15):

Right. Again, that's another community-based organization, and they do a terrific job of figuring out how to do that and how to, again, be respectful, give people clean clothing, just try to help them and make sure that no stigma, no shame is being communicated, and that's really hard and really profound if we can do that.

Denise Pope (19:40):

Why aren't these things being offered just as part of the deal, right? In communities where you know that there's going to be large populations in need, why do we have to fight for all this? What's an answer here, Amy, if you have one?

Amy Gerstein (19:55):

Well, I have some insights from, I think some really strong practices that a few districts were doing. In a few districts, if a student was ever considered in unstable housing, they kept that flag on the student's file forever because they said, okay, so maybe Amy's family is struggling and needs a lift this year, this academic year. Chances are, even if Amy's family gets into stable housing, it's probably not all that stable. The chances are they're still, they may be scraping by, so we'll keep a flag that says this is a family that might need a little extra. So I think that's a very good action that school districts can take. There's no need to, once you're identified, let's just keep you identified as someone in need of extra support.

Dan Schwartz (20:52):

Where does the school district get the money to do this?

Amy Gerstein (20:55):

So there are federal and state resources. I will say I thought that the resources were meager, not in terms of dollars, but that these families needed more. And it was really hard on the schools and districts to be the providers. So where they had strong partnerships with community organizations, it was much better for the family.

Denise Pope (21:20):

A show a while back on, I forget what the actual phrase is, but community schools where all of the resources are kind of there or the community's all working together with them. Is that a potential, it's like how much can the school take on is a question?

Dan Schwartz (21:40):

Say more about the model, Amy.

Amy Gerstein (21:42):

So the community schools are an area that we've been doing research for over 20 years, and it's getting increasing attention. The state just passed a bill that is providing some funding for statewide community schools, and what it is it's a model, and it's a strategy that is intended to help remove barriers to learning. That's the way I like to talk about it. So if you're hungry, if you're unhoused, if you have concerns about your immigration status, if you need a job, if you need to learn English, all of these kinds of services can be, and issues, can be identified and addressed by the school, by the school having formal partnerships with community-based organizations that provide it.

(22:28):

So in these community schools, there's generally a full-time person who could be called a community school manager or community school coordinator whose job is to work with teachers and with the community-based organizations to be able to say, "Teachers, you might pick this up in your classroom. You might have a student that divulges something. You might notice that this is a child that keeps falling asleep in class. Maybe they're hungry, maybe they're sick. Maybe there's something going on. You need to let the community school manager know so that they can identify appropriate resources." Those are some of the best models. And I can say Redwood City as a school district has addressed that district-wide. Oakland has been trying to do that district-wide as well. It's great for making sure that the whole child and the whole family is being helped. There are mental health services. Sometimes there are school clinics, sometimes there are dental services, the dignity wagons, all of that. And there's one person for sure at the school site that is handling all this discreetly.

Denise Pope (23:31):

And that just makes so much sense to me, and it doesn't seem like it's that hard. Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but gosh.

Dan Schwartz (23:38):

Well, it's sort of surprising that the main problem is a lack of information, that parents don't know where to go, and the school can't tell.

Denise Pope (23:47):

Or are afraid.

Dan Schwartz (23:50):

Or they're resistant, and the school doesn't quite know who. And maybe without a community organization, the school doesn't have a triage model for helping them find the right resource.

Denise Pope (24:01):

I could also just see as someone who knows something, maybe in the lunchroom or whatever, there's all these privacy rules, so it's not surprising to me that the person at this end of the school doesn't talk to the person at this end of the school because of the privacy rules. And there's privacy rules about everything. I mean, what you can and can't divulge.

Amy Gerstein (24:20):

There are, and HIPAA also comes into play, which is a privacy role that's related to which for sure show up around mental health or even physical health because a lot of these community schools have clinics, or they have vans that visit and do confidential medical care for both students and sometimes families. What I would say about the sharing of information is a lot of these privacy laws are poorly understood, so people tend to err on the side of keeping things private, and they may not always have to. One of the colleagues we work with the most is a child psychiatrist in the medical school here at ��, and he always calls it the Great Wall of HIPAA, and he thinks it's just overly worried about, that we can honor privacy, and we can make sure people are getting the help they need.

Denise Pope (25:14):

Especially when the well-being of the child is at stake, you would think that that would be, but I get it, it's hard. But it does bring us back to the very beginning of this conversation, which is why schools of education should absolutely have centers like the Gardner Center that studies communities, because you can't learn, as you said. This is the worst thing that can happen, and we know there's so many other things that affect kids in learning. It's sad that we need to do these kinds of studies, that these issues even exist at the extent that they do. And yet, I'm so glad that you and your team are doing this and doing this really, really important work, Amy, so thank you. Thank you for being here, but also thank you for the work.

Dan Schwartz (26:04):

I agree. Thank you, Amy. It's been a great conversation and very informative in an area where I think a lot of people don't have a chance to see what's happening and how we can do things outside of school or in school that support these children.

Denise Pope (26:19):

For sure. I really think we're just starting to scratch the surface of how much these partnerships can actually help. Dan, I'm curious, do you think schools are ready to navigate the creation of these triage models?

Dan Schwartz (26:33):

I think it's going to be a challenge. Schools need to stay up to date on the laws and work within the system to support the students more effectively, but it is going to be finding that balance between respecting privacy and getting students the help they need.

Denise Pope (26:47):

And that's where the research really comes in, giving schools the knowledge they need to make smarter and more informed decisions. So thank you to Amy once again for sharing all these insights, and thank all of you for joining us on this episode of School's In. Remember to subscribe to our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (27:08):

And I'm Dan Schwartz.

Podcast

split

Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope

Educational inequality: Post-pandemic patterns and trends

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 18:58:48 +0000

Educational inequality: Post-pandemic patterns and trends Olivia Peterkin Wed, 08/28/2024 - 11:58

Education Policy | K-12 | Poverty and Inequality

Sean Reardon talks about educational inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic, and what’s needed to chart a path forward.

August 29, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

Pandemic-related learning loss has been a hot-button issue for educators, parents, and students as researchers work to navigate its consequences. Part of the recovery process means identifying how far-reaching the effects of learning loss are, what can be done about it, and who was hardest hit.

“Declines in test scores were more than twice as big in the poorest communities in the country than they were in the most affluent,” said Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE).

“And so that means that kids in those communities are much, much further behind.”

On this episode of School’s In, Reardon joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope as they discuss educational inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic and what’s needed to chart a path forward.

Reardon’s research sheds light on key issues including the impact of poverty and inequality on educational opportunities and how parents can work with teachers to advocate for their children.

“I think we owe some gratitude to teachers and principals who I think really have helped students out a lot post-pandemic, and we've made real progress,” Reardon said.

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Transcript

Sean Reardon (00:00):

Declines in test scores were more than twice as big in the poorest communities in the country than they were in the most affluent. And so that means that kids in those communities are much, much further behind. They already were further behind, and now they're even more behind. So there's sort of a widening inequality as a result of the pandemic, not just an overall decline.

Dan Schwartz (00:23):

Today we're discussing the impact of poverty and inequality on educational opportunities, specifically focusing on learning loss during the pandemic and the gains, or not, that we've made since.

Denise Pope (00:34):

It's kind of crazy that we are still talking about the impacts of the pandemic. And that's the main reason why we're tackling it in several episodes. The data is coming in and it's sobering. The pandemic impacted all learners no matter the income level, and the recovery has been uneven at best. It's more important than ever to address these gaps and find ways to support all learners. So let's dive in.

(00:59):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting edge insights in learning. Each episode, we dive into the latest trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners.

(01:08):

I'm Denise Pope, senior lecturer at �� GSE and co-founder of Challenge Success. And I am here with my wonderful co-host, Dan Schwartz, dean of the �� Graduate School of Education and the faculty director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Dan Schwartz (01:30):

Hi, Denise. It's good to see you again. One of our big questions today is, what happened with learning loss since COVID?

(01:36):

Now, when we talk about learning loss, we're not talking about forgetting some things over the summer; what's typically called "summer melt." What we're talking about is students not having a chance to learn, and that's what happened in COVID.

(01:49):

We're incredibly fortunate to have a leading scholar on this topic join us today. It is Professor Sean Reardon. He's a professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at ��. He looks at causes, patterns, trends, consequences of educational inequality across the nation. He has a very unique database that basically has the standardized tests of every child,, and so he's been the go-to researcher on pandemic recovery.

(02:16):

So Sean, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Denise Pope (02:19):

Sean, we would love to start by having you walk us through exactly how we measure learning loss in the first place and recovery.

Sean Reardon (02:27):

Yeah. First what we do is we look at ... For example, we look at eighth graders in 2019 before the pandemic, and we see across the country and in every school district in the country, "What was their average scores in math and reading?" And then we're able to look again at eighth graders three years later, after the pandemic, spring of 2022, and see what their average scores are in math and reading. And then we can compare where the eighth graders were in 2022; those kids were in fifth, sixth, seventh grade through the pandemic and so didn't have the opportunity often to learn all the material that one would typically learn; and we compare them to what the eighth graders three years before knew who went through fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade under normal conditions.

(03:15):

And what we find and what all the national data shows is that in 2022, students were about a half grade further behind in math and about a third of a grade further behind in reading than where their counterparts were in 2022. What that means is that over those three years of the pandemic period, kids missed out on a half year of instruction of math essentially. They just didn't get the opportunity to learn as much math as they would've without the pandemic.

Dan Schwartz (03:46):

So Denise, would that have been your prediction? That of all the disciplines that we measure, math would take the biggest hit?

Denise Pope (03:53):

I think that would have been. A half year is a lot. That's bigger than I would've guessed. A half year ... I mean, that's a half a year, right? That's a lot. I was thinking a couple months maybe, but six months?

(04:07):

Well, how do you measure a year? Is it six months? Because it's a nine-month school year.

Sean Reardon (04:12):

It's half of a nine-month school year. So think of it as four and a half months. It was really a little more than a half, so call it five months.

Denise Pope (04:19):

Okay. That's a lot. That's higher than I thought.

(04:20):

But yeah, I would've thought math because that's what empties out of my brain the quickest, so ...

Dan Schwartz (04:26):

No, no, that's not the reason.

(04:29):

Sean, do you have a good theory for why math?

Sean Reardon (04:32):

Yeah, I mean, I think the reason is likely that during the pandemic when kids weren't getting as much instruction in school, either they weren't in school or they couldn't concentrate as much, or there's a lot obviously else going on in the world, that at home kids are more likely to read, or if they're young kids, their parents might read to them, but it's much less common for kids to sort of sit down and do some algebra in their spare time at home or have their parents sit down and work through multiplication tables with them at home.

(05:04):

And so most math learning typically happens in school as a result of what happens in math classrooms, but kids learn to read both at school and at home. And so I think that's why we saw a little bit less of a hit in reading than in math, because the missing out on school hurts math more.

Dan Schwartz (05:23):

I have to describe this study, because it's sort of outrageous.

(05:28):

So there was someone who took five-year olds, English speaking five-year olds, and they had them memorize a passage in Greek from Homer.

Denise Pope (05:36):

Oh my ... These poor babies.

Dan Schwartz (05:38):

Yeah, they just memorized the Greek. You know, just meaningless symbols.

Denise Pope (05:42):

Okay.

Dan Schwartz (05:42):

And 10 years later, he came back and he had two conditions, and in both of them, he tried to teach the same poem in Greek. In one condition was these kids who had learned it when they were five and probably had no memory that they ever learned it. The other condition were kids who had never been exposed to it. So the ones who had been exposed and memorized it when they were five learned it like five times faster than the ones who had never been exposed.

(06:09):

What does this have to do with learning loss? You never really lose it. It's just sort of there waiting for you to come back and get it.

Denise Pope (06:15):

So that gives me a little bit of hope. Right?

(06:18):

But I will tell you, there are some things that I still remember from high school that I have no need for whatsoever. I mean, "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote," right? Like Chaucer, the first lines of Chaucer. What is that doing in my head? I have all the kings and queens of England memorized in order. Willie, Willie, Harry, Steve, Harry, Dick, John, Harry 3, 1, 2, 3 Ned, Richard 2, Henry 4, 5, 6, then who. Why is that in my brain?

Dan Schwartz (06:43):

I don't know.

Denise Pope (06:43):

It's like that guy with the Greek. They put that in there and I can't get it out now.

Dan Schwartz (06:47):

I don't know, but just hearing you do that, I like you more. That's why.

Denise Pope (06:56):

And obviously there are other subjects that you learn in school, but you only have data for math and reading. Is that right?

Sean Reardon (07:03):

That's right. For the last 20 years, we have tested in this country every third through eighth grader every year in math and reading. So yeah, we have data going back to 2009. So we have about 500 million test scores from every kid in the country over that time period. That tells us a lot about math and reading. But we don't test how well kids are doing in the arts or in history or things like that, and so we don't know as much about what the pandemic did to kids' other sets of skills.

Denise Pope (07:37):

And we may never know.

(07:38):

Part of that is what you assess is what you care about too. So that also says something about sort of the lower level status of some of these subjects that don't get assessed.

(07:49):

Dan, you don't think that's lower level ... I'm not saying they do have lower level status.

Dan Schwartz (07:53):

They're so special that we don't bother to measure them.

Denise Pope (07:56):

Okay, you could look at it that way too, but we still won't know what got lost.

Dan Schwartz (08:00):

Okay, Sean, so your database tells me something about the regions the tests are coming from, the social status, the economic status.

Sean Reardon (08:09):

Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (08:10):

Before we talk about the bounce back, like how people are coming back, did the hit to math and English, was it even?

Sean Reardon (08:18):

No, that's maybe the biggest concern. I mean, obviously the kids didn't learn as much is a concern, but that fell disproportionately on kids in the lowest income communities in the country. And so the declines in test scores were more than twice as big in the poorest communities in the country than they were in the most affluent. And so that means that kids in those communities are much, much further behind. They already were further behind, and now they're even more behind. So there's sort of a widening inequality as a result of the pandemic, not just an overall decline. That's particularly concerning.

Dan Schwartz (08:54):

Sometimes people bash schools, but when I hear that, I realize how important school is as a lever of equity, and when it gets disrupted, the inequities really ... They get bigger, more rampant. Is that a fair conclusion on this, or ...

Sean Reardon (09:11):

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. We often hear that schools are unequal, that schools in poor communities don't have the same resources or don't have the ability to attract skilled or experienced teachers, they don't have as good facilities, and so schools are worse in poorer communities and better in affluent communities. And so people say, "Oh, the schooling system's really unequal." Which there's some truth to that, but schools aren't nearly as unequal as families. The difference in growing up in a poor family and in a rich family is an orders of magnitude of income difference. And the differences between schools in rich and poor communities aren't nearly that big.

(09:47):

So while schools might be somewhat unequal, they're much more equal than family environments are in terms of the kinds of resources available. So schools tend to act like an equalizing force in society even though they're not completely equal. Sort of an interesting paradox.

Denise Pope (10:05):

Sean, what did you find out when you looked post 2022, I guess that's what it was, at how kids were doing now?

Sean Reardon (10:13):

What we found was actually pretty surprising, I think, and better news than I would've expected or many would've expected. What we found was that even though there had been a half grade of lost learning in math, kids recovered a third of that loss in just one year; which might not sound like a lot, but what it means is that the average student learned about 15 to 20% more in the '22 to '23 school year than a typical student learned before the pandemic. If we could increase national productivity or GDP by 20% in a year, we'd be bouncing off the walls, right? So a 20% increase in how much kids learn in one year is big.

(10:55):

It's also really big in historical terms. If you look back over the last 30 years at the rates at which scores have improved nationally, and they have improved nationally a lot over the last 30 years, the rate at which they improved in this last year was as big or bigger than in any time in the last 30 years.

(11:14):

So the good news is, while there was a big decline, the first year after the pandemic shows real signs of a strong recovery. We're not all the way back, but we made really good progress, and I think a surprising amount.

Dan Schwartz (11:28):

Is that because people are just pedaling faster, or ...

Denise Pope (11:33):

You mean teachers are working harder?

Dan Schwartz (11:35):

And students.

Denise Pope (11:36):

Yeah.

Dan Schwartz (11:37):

Do we have some explanation for how this happened?

Sean Reardon (11:40):

So I think what likely accounts for it is that school systems and teachers really focused on helping kids catch up with some of the material they lost. And not just in their regular math class, but a lot of school districts invested in extra tutoring programs for kids, after school academic programs for kids, extended summer school programs. So a lot of extra resources went in to try to help kids recover.

(12:09):

Some of that was funded by funds from the federal government that were intended to help school districts recover. But in fact, the recovery was much larger than you would've guessed just based on the amount of money that the federal government put in. I think we owe some gratitude to teachers and principals who I think really have helped students out a lot post-pandemic, and we've made real progress.

Denise Pope (12:31):

No, agreed. Shout out to all the educators and teachers out there who are working their butts off. Oh my gosh. It is so great to hear that all those efforts have really affected the students so positively. Yay.

(12:44):

Okay, now I'm curious, because we've discussed learning loss in the under-resourced schools; please tell us, what about the recovery?

Sean Reardon (12:52):

Recovery hasn't been unequal. That is kids in poor districts and rich districts have recovered about as much as each other. But that's not enough to undo the inequality that was exacerbated by the pandemic. So kids in low-income districts fell behind further during the pandemic, and then everyone recovered about the same amount during the pandemic. So the kids in the low-income districts are still further behind.

(13:18):

In lots of affluent districts, test scores are back up equal to or above where they were before the pandemic. So there's been near complete recovery in the richest places, but because the poor places saw such a large decline, the recovery hasn't yet been enough to kind of get them back up to where they were before the pandemic.

Dan Schwartz (13:39):

My biggest concern on COVID was actually for the youngest kids, that this is an important window for social emotional development, for developing a taste for what schools have to offer. Are they sort of starting to show up in your database? I heard you started with third grade, but are they beginning to show up and can you get a fix on it?

Sean Reardon (14:01):

So far, we haven't seen much difference across grades and how big the lost learning was, and not much difference in the size of the recovery. But those third graders were kids who were sort of coming into kindergarten or just in kindergarten at the beginning of the pandemic. The other group of kids that I worry about are the kids even younger than that who were sort of in early childhood, in preschool during the pandemic. And we don't know a whole lot about what's happened to those kids. My team and I are starting some research, we're collecting data that's going to help us to answer what happened to those very young kids during the pandemic, but we'll have to come back and talk about that another time.

Dan Schwartz (14:40):

They're going to start showing up in your database next year, is that right?

Sean Reardon (14:44):

They're starting to come into third grade, and so we'll be able to see more of them over the next few years.

Dan Schwartz (14:50):

Do you have a prediction, Denise?

Denise Pope (14:51):

Well, I was just going to say, are you worried? Because we know there's certain windows where ... Even language learning, for instance, there's a certain window where it gets much harder as you get older to start something new. Is that why you both are holding this tight with the young kids and worried?

Sean Reardon (15:06):

I'm worried about it for a couple reasons. One is, yeah, there's sort of critical periods in early childhood, and early elementary school are key periods, but also, places that were not in-person schooling for a while, that's particularly hard for a first grader. First grade Zoom school is not super effective, both at socialization into how to be in school and also just in terms of learning. You can't do all the stuff and you can't have the one-on-one attention from the teacher. So I think it's likely that remote learning was more harmful to the very young kids than it was to the older kids who could adapt more easily to the Zoom modality.

Denise Pope (15:49):

So I'm a parent, I'm listening to this. I want to do something to help, right? This is making me very sad. What can an average person do in terms of helping, advocating? What can we do?

Sean Reardon (16:02):

I think one of the things, we looked at survey data, and we found that a lot of parents during and right after the pandemic period didn't really have a sense of how far behind their kids were. Most parents sort of said, "I think my kid's doing fine." And the reason why they say that is because imagine that you have an eighth grader in 2022; well, you don't really know what an eighth grader in 2019 knew in terms of math unless you happen to have a child three years older, right? So it's very hard for a parent to sort of know from their one child, "What does a typical eighth grader know and can do in terms of math or other subjects?" So it's very hard for a parent to assess whether their kid's on track or behind where they should be.

(16:46):

The school district is in a better position, and teachers and the data the district has is in a better position to sort of help parents do that. But I don't think there was a lot of communication always of that. And so I think one of the things parents can do is really talk to the teachers and the principals to sort of understand where is their child at and where are kids at in their community? And then think about, what resources can they bring? How can they advocate for their child? How can they advocate for another child to make sure that the kids who are behind are really getting the resources they need?

Denise Pope (17:18):

I know there's also ... You talked about the federal funding, right? ESSR, other funds like that. And I know that they're ending right now. But it sounds like even though you said it wasn't all about money, some of it was about money. So is there a way that an individual can rally their congressperson, or ... I don't know. How can we get this money back?

Sean Reardon (17:40):

Yeah. The federal government provided school districts with 190 billion dollars starting early in the pandemic, and it'll end this year. That sounds like a lot of money, but that actually is only about less than one third of the annual budget we spend on education. So spread out over four years or so, it's not a ton of money per child. And that money has mostly been spent, and the rest of it needs to be spent in the next six to nine months, and we're not going to be fully recovered in lots of these districts, particularly the low income districts, by then.

(18:15):

So I think it's important for states to step in and fill the void a little bit, carry the baton, and figure out how to provide extra targeted resources to those kids and those schools and districts that still have a long way to catch up. And parents can really help advocate for that because they can talk to their state congressperson, they can talk to their superintendent, and they can help keep the pressure on to make sure that people are paying attention to those kids who need it the most.

Dan Schwartz (18:42):

So Sean, there's probably a lot of people who want to know which state's approach to shutting schools work the best; at least for educational outcomes, maybe not for mortality rates. So do you know this?

Sean Reardon (18:57):

Well, we have data actually for every school and school district in the country. And what we generally find, and other research has shown, is that the longer a school district was in a remote or hybrid instruction mode, the further behind kids fell.

(19:13):

But really, remote schooling only explains a small part of the learning losses. I mean, you have to remember, the pandemic was an all encompassing global event. It wasn't just that kids were suddenly learning on Zoom. They were also not able to see their friends, not able to participate in extracurriculars.

Denise Pope (19:32):

Yes, exactly. These kids' lives really were disrupted in every way possible during the pandemic, and it's all playing a part in where we are today.

(19:42):

Thank you so much, Sean, for being here. We learned so much. Thank you, thank you. We learned so much about learning loss, and we're really glad to hear about the recovery underway.

Dan Schwartz (19:52):

Yes. Thank you, Sean. Your research makes it clear that the most vulnerable students are also the ones who suffered the most during this time. It's a stark reminder of how crucial it is to address inequality and educational opportunity.

Denise Pope (20:07):

Agreed, Dan. Agreed. But all hope isn't lost here. And I think there is a lot we as educators and as parents can do to help. For parents, get involved as much as you can; connect with teachers to see how your kid is doing, offer resources if you have that ability, and ultimately just continue to advocate for your child.

Dan Schwartz (20:26):

And for educators, keep showing up for the kids like you have been. I know this is a lot of extra work, it's hard work, but it makes a difference. So connect with parents, keep them informed as much as we can, have patience, and help these kids climb back.

Denise Pope (20:42):

100%, Dan. I could not agree more.

(20:44):

Thank you again to our guest, Sean Reardon for this really enlightening conversation. And thank all of you for joining us on this episode of School's In. Remember to subscribe to our show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you tune in.

(20:58):

I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (20:59):

I'm Dan Schwartz.

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope , sean reardon

�� event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

Olivia Peterkin — Thu, 16 May 2024 19:00:14 +0000

�� event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

Olivia Peterkin Thu, 05/16/2024 - 12:00

�� Law School professor Rick Banks (far right) moderates a panel on legal strategies to promote school integration and educational equity with panelists Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law (middle right); Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center (middle left); and Myron Orfield, professor of civil rights and liberties law at the University of Minnesota. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Events | Poverty and Inequality | Race and Equity

On the 70th anniversary of the landmark court decision, the conference delved into ways to support integration in U.S. public schools.

May 16, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

It’s been 70 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” But school segregation has increased steadily over the past three decades.

A May 6 conference at �� explored the legacy of the historic court ruling, bringing together scholars, educators, policymakers, and legal experts to chart a path forward.

“We held this conference to take stock of where we are now, 70 years after the historic Brown v. Board decision, in terms of school segregation and equality of educational opportunity in the United States,” said Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University.

“We want to honor the progress that we've made, but also assess and interrogate the challenges that the promise of Brown still faces and the work we still have to do.” said Ann Owens, a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Southern California, in her opening remarks.

The event, organized and led by Reardon and Owens, was co-sponsored by the GSE, the Educational Opportunity Project, the �� Institute for Advancing Just Societies, �� Graduate School of Business, �� Law School, and the �� Center for Racial Justice.

What schools look like 70 years after Brown

The conference featured three panels on the effectiveness of school desegregation and what courts, school districts, and states can do to support it, bookended by keynotes looking at the current state of segregation in U.S. public schools and the road ahead.

In the opening session, Reardon and Owens presented new research findings on racial and economic segregation among schools, which has grown steadily in large school districts over the past 30 years. Researchers on the joint �� and USC project found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status increased 52 percent between 1991 and 2019.

“While we would say that we're not back to pre-Brown levels, the rise of school segregation in large districts that serve students of color is still troubling,” Owens said.

“The best current research on the consequences of segregation demonstrates unequivocally that segregation has significant negative long-term consequences for black and Hispanic students,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research. “And our new research shows that segregation has been increasing in the last 30 years in large school districts as a direct result of educational policies that have abandoned the goal of integrated schooling.”

Owens and Reardon’s research found that the dissolution of court orders focused on integration and the prevalence of policies favoring school choice over integration have played the largest roles in increasing racial and economic segregation in U.S. schools in recent decades.

“Those two things together entirely explain all of the growth in school segregation since 2000,” he said. “If we don’t do more to create racially and economically integrated schools, we will be perpetuating a system of unequal educational opportunity.”

During the conference, Reardon and Owens also announced the launch of the Segregation Explorer, an interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University that provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022.

Why integration is important

During each of the panels, researchers and faculty from �� and other universities discussed the importance of integrated schools and strategies to increase integration using different systemic and organizational levers.

“Integration is not about just the assignment of children to schools, but is fundamentally about school resources – it’s about funding teacher quality, access to multicultural curriculum, and access to college preparatory curriculum,” said Rucker Johnson, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, in a panel moderated by GSE assistant professor Michael Hines that discussed evidence on the effects of historical and contemporary school integration efforts. “These are the pieces that get undermined with segregated schools.”

Johnson shared data on the effects of desegregation efforts showing improved academic and life outcomes for students who had early and continued exposure to well-resourced schools, including increased wages and a significant reduction in the annual incidence of poverty in adulthood.

“Moving from desegregation to integration means moving from access to inclusion,” he said. “It means moving from exposure to understanding, and those things don't happen overnight.”

Reasons for hope

In the closing keynote Prudence Carter, a professor of sociology at Brown University and former Jacks Family Professor of Education at the GSE, and Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, discussed the need for perseverance, collaboration, and hope to reverse patterns of segregation in U.S. public schools.

“As we know, we as a nation have infrequently and inconsistently achieved the Brown promise to make education available to all on equal terms, beginning immediately following the Supreme Court's decision and persistently thereafter,” Lhamon said.

“We have lived a long history of unequal schooling, even since Brown, that persists now, punctuated periodically with beacons of hope and confirmation that inequality is not in fact inevitable,” she said.

Lhamon shared a commitment on the federal level to champion nondiscriminatory education, describing investigations and enforcement actions that her office has carried out over the years since it was established to uphold civil rights legislation.

“Thomas Jefferson is famous for having said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” she said. “And we know – and our history has confirmed again and again – that the struggle to offer equal schooling on a nondiscriminatory basis requires just that vigilance.”

USC professor Ann Owens (left) and GSE professor Sean Reardon (right) co-led the event. (Photo: Christine Baker)

University of California at Berkeley professor Rucker Johnson (left), Texas A&M University professor Kalena Cortes (middle), and Tufts University professor Elizabeth Setren discuss the effects of school integration efforts. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Attendees look on during the conference commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling. (Photo: Christine Baker)

A �� law student poses a question to panelists during the conference's Q&A portion. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Columbia University assistant professor Marissa Thompson presents on how parental choices drive policies that affect segregation patterns. (Photo: Christine Baker)

University of Virginia law professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson presents on legal strategies to promote school integration. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Marissa Thompson (left); Irene Lo, an assistant professor of management science and engineering at �� (center); and Tomás Monarrez, a senior research fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, discuss school and state policy strategies for integrating schools. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education (left), talks about hope and the path forward with Brown University professor Prudence Carter (right). (Photo: Christine Baker)

Attendees converse with Prudence Carter, a former professor at �� GSE. (Photo: Christine Baker)

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70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, new research shows rise in school segregation

Carrie Spector — Sun, 05 May 2024 15:53:27 +0000

70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, new research shows rise in school segregation

Carrie Spector Sun, 05/05/2024 - 08:53

A new report from researchers at �� and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past 30 years — an increase that appears to be driven by policy decisions, not demographic changes. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Education Policy | Poverty and Inequality | Race and Equity

Researchers at �� and USC launch the Segregation Explorer, a website providing data on segregation trends and patterns across the United States.

May 6, 2024

By Carrie Spector

As the nation prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, a new report from researchers at �� and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past three decades — an increase that appears to be driven in part by policies favoring school choice over integration.

Analyzing data from U.S. public schools going back to 1967, the researchers found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status has increased by about 50 percent since 1991.

The report also provides new evidence about the forces driving recent trends in school segregation, showing that the expansion of charter schools has played a major role.

The findings were released on May 6 with the launch of the Segregation Explorer, a new interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University. The website provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022.

“School segregation levels are not at pre-Brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s,” said Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at �� Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project. “In most large districts, school segregation has increased while residential segregation and racial economic inequality have declined, and our findings indicate that policy choices – not demographic changes – are driving the increase.”

“There’s a tendency to attribute segregation in schools to segregation in neighborhoods,” said Ann Owens, a professor of sociology and public policy at USC. “But we’re finding that the story is more complicated than that.”

Assessing the rise

In the Brown v. Board decision issued on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and established that “separate but equal” schools were not only inherently unequal but unconstitutional. The ruling paved the way for future decisions that led to rapid school desegregation in many school districts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Though segregation in most school districts is much lower than it was 60 years ago, the researchers found that over the past three decades, both racial and economic segregation in large districts increased. Much of the increase in economic segregation since 1991, measured by segregation between students eligible and ineligible for free lunch, occurred in the last 15 years.

White-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation, while lower on average than white-Black segregation, have both more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s.

Racial-economic segregation – specifically the difference in the proportion of free-lunch-eligible students between the average white and Black or Hispanic student’s schools – has increased by 70 percent since 1991.

School segregation is strongly associated with achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, especially the rate at which achievement gaps widen during school, the researchers said.

“Segregation appears to shape educational outcomes because it concentrates Black and Hispanic students in higher-poverty schools, which results in unequal learning opportunities,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research and a faculty affiliate of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Policies shaping recent trends

The recent rise in school segregation appears to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions, the researchers said.

Both residential segregation and racial disparities in income declined between 1990 and 2020 in most large school districts. “Had nothing else changed, that trend would have led to lower school segregation,” said Owens.

But since 1991, roughly two-thirds of districts that were under court-ordered desegregation have been released from court oversight. Meanwhile, since 1998, the charter sector – a form of expanded school choice – has grown.

Expanding school choice could influence segregation levels in different ways: If families sought schools that were more diverse than the ones available in their neighborhood, it could reduce segregation. But the researchers found that in districts where the charter sector expanded most rapidly in the 2000s and 2010s, segregation grew the most.

The researchers’ analysis also quantified the extent to which the release from court orders accounted for the rise in school segregation. They found that, together, the release from court oversight and the expansion of choice accounted entirely for the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019.

The researchers noted enrollment policies that school districts can implement to mitigate segregation, such as voluntary integration programs, socioeconomic-based student assignment policies, and school choice policies that affirmatively promote integration.

“School segregation levels are high, troubling, and rising in large districts,” said Reardon. “These findings should sound an alarm for educators and policymakers.”

Additional collaborators on the project include Demetra Kalogrides, Thalia Tom, and Heewon Jang. This research, including the development of the Segregation Explorer data and website, was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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New report shows historic gains in pandemic recovery for many U.S. school districts

Carrie Spector — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 21:26:41 +0000

New report shows historic gains in pandemic recovery for many U.S. school districts

Carrie Spector Tue, 01/30/2024 - 13:26

A new report by researchers at �� and Harvard finds that students recovered about one-third of the original loss in math and one-quarter of the loss in reading. (Photo: iStock)

Education Policy | K-12 | Poverty and Inequality

Students exceeded a typical year’s progress in math and reading, but slower gains among poor students have widened the achievement gap.

January 31, 2024

By Carrie Spector

A new report by researchers at �� and Harvard shows that U.S. students achieved historic gains in math and reading during the 2022-23 school year, the first full year of recovery from the pandemic.

The report, which measures the pace of academic recovery during the 2022-23 school year for school districts in 30 states, finds that students recovered about one-third of the original loss in math and one-quarter of the loss in reading. These gains significantly exceed what students would be expected to learn in a typical year, based on past trends.

Students in one state, Alabama, returned to pre-pandemic achievement levels in math, while students in three states reached 2019 levels in reading. But students in a majority of the states in the study remain more than a third of a grade level behind pre-pandemic levels in math, and students in almost half of the states are that far behind in reading.

“Students overall haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels of achievement,” said study co-author Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University. “But clear progress is being made.”

The new data also reveal that achievement gaps between high- and low-poverty districts have widened since 2019, the result of larger initial losses in poor districts and the slower recovery of poor students within the average district.

The report was published Jan. 31 as part of the Education Recovery Scorecard, a collaboration between researchers at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the Center for Education Policy and Research (CEPR) at Harvard.

The researchers followed up on findings they released last year showing that, between spring 2019 and spring 2022, the average student in grades 3 through 8 had lost the equivalent of half a grade level in math achievement and a third of a grade level in reading.

“We should thank teachers and principals and superintendents for what they’ve done for American schoolchildren in the last year. Their efforts have led to strikingly large improvements in children’s learning,” said Reardon. “But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the recovery has been uneven, and we have a long way to go.”

Measuring losses and progress

The report draws from the �� Education Data Archive (SEDA), a comprehensive national database run by the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University that includes reading and math test scores from every public school in the United States. The database, first made available online in 2016, has been used by researchers and policymakers to study patterns and trends in educational opportunity across the country and by race, gender, and socioeconomic conditions.

For this analysis, the researchers used standardized test results from roughly 8,000 school districts in 30 states. The remaining 20 states were not included either because they changed their state assessments since 2022 or because they did not provide sufficiently detailed data on their websites.

To measure the original losses from the pandemic, the researchers compared test scores from spring 2019 and spring 2022. To measure the recovery, they compared scores from spring 2022 and spring 2023. Across all 30 states in the study, students recovered about 30 percent of the original loss in math and 25 percent of the loss in reading.

While students in Alabama returned to pre-pandemic levels in math by spring 2023, students in 17 states remained more than a third of a grade level behind their 2019 achievement levels. Students in Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi returned to 2019 levels of achievement in reading, but students in 14 states remained more than a third of a grade level behind.

During the 2022-23 school year, students recovered on average about one-third of the pandemic loss in math and one-quarter of the loss in reading. The gains are significantly more than students would be expected to learn in a typical year, based on past trends from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. (Chart courtesy of the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University)

An uneven recovery

The report illustrates disparities in the impact of both the pandemic and the recovery. Achievement gaps between high- and low-poverty districts widened during the pandemic, with students in high-poverty districts losing the most ground.

The researchers found that the recovery so far has done little to close these gaps. “In many states, the recovery is being led by wealthier districts, which lost the least during the pandemic,” said Reardon, who is also a faculty affiliate of the �� Accelerator for Learning and a senior fellow at the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research. “Students in poor districts are, on average, well behind where they were in 2019.”

States in which achievement gaps have widened the most are Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Michigan, according to the report.

Congress provided a total of $190 billion in federal aid to K-12 schools during the pandemic, with most of it targeted at high-poverty districts. The funding program is set to expire in September 2024, and according to the U.S. Department of Education, roughly a third of the funds remained unspent as of fall 2023.

The report recommends ways for state and local agencies to allocate the remaining funds, including expanding summer learning opportunities this year and contracting for tutoring and after-school programs.

“Despite strong gains last year, most school districts are not on track to complete the recovery this spring,” said Thomas Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and a co-author of the report. “District leaders should use these data to check their progress and rethink how they spend the remaining federal relief dollars.”

Additional collaborators on this project include Erin Fahle, Sadie Richardson, Julia Paris, Demetra Kalogrides, Jie Min, and Jiyeon Shim (Educational Opportunity Project); Daniel Dewey, Victoria Carbonari, and Dean Kaplan (Center for Education Policy Research); and Douglas Staiger (Dartmouth College). The research was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin and Griffin Catalyst, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 

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Acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver talks about building ‘bridges of compassion’ through literature at �� GSE event

Olivia Peterkin — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 18:02:34 +0000

Acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver talks about building ‘bridges of compassion’ through literature at �� GSE event

Olivia Peterkin Tue, 10/17/2023 - 11:02

Barbara Kingsolver (left) reads from her newest novel at the event co-moderated by Lisa Goldman Rosas, an assistant professor at �� School of Medicine (center), and Sarah Levine, an assistant professor at the GSE. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

Campus Life | Events | Poverty and Inequality

At two campus events, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author discussed the power of community, literature, and teachers.

October 18, 2023

By Olivia Peterkin

Barbara Kingsolver, acclaimed author and winner of a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for her most recent novel, Demon Copperhead, says that she waited many years – because of shame – to share the story of her Appalachian community.

“I’ve watched over time that progressive people have become much more prepared to consider structural and institutional poverty and oppression with respect to race, but not with respect to class,” Kingsolver said to a crowd of 400 at ��’s CEMEX Auditorium on Oct. 14.

“We still imagine that the Appalachian people who were left behind economically are there because we are lazy and stupid,” she said. “It wasn’t until I finally got old enough and solid enough that I decided I was going to try and tell this story of my people, to try and cross the divide.”

During her visit to campus, hosted by �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), Kingsolver shared her reverence for the power of literature and its potential for shaping people’s feelings about an oft-overlooked or disparaged part of society.

Kingsolver grew up in Central Appalachia, where Demon Copperhead, a modern retelling of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, is set. The novel tells the story of an orphaned boy’s journey of resilience through foster care, poverty, and addiction in rural Appalachia.

“Something literature can do that’s so special, that nothing else can do, is put you inside another person’s life,” Kingsolver said. “We learn from human experience, and literature is so sneaky because it can cross these divides that other forms of media often cannot.”

The power of visibility

The event was initiated by Kelly Boles, a GSE doctoral candidate who reached out to Kingsolver just eight weeks ago in the hopes that the author would be able to squeeze in an extra stop on her Pacific Coast book tour.

Boles, who also grew up in Central Appalachia, enrolled at the GSE after teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in Kentucky’s fifth district, one of the poorest congressional districts in the country, where she saw firsthand how rural students were affected by poverty and invisibility.

“A lot of people were surprised by some of the things in [Kingsolver’s] book, because of how harsh some of Demon’s experiences were,” Boles said, referring to the novel’s protagonist. “But I taught students who were like Demon. So his story felt very honest to me as an accurate portrayal of real challenges for people in Appalachia, and a true effort to highlight the systemic issues of the region.”

Boles is a fellow with the Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence (DARE) program at ��, which supports doctoral students in preparing for academic careers and encourages fellows to develop projects that enhance students’ experience on campus. As part of the visit, Kingsolver also met with a group of about 10 GSE doctoral students, undergraduates studying creative writing, and students from the �� Storytelling Project to talk about the craft of writing and telling authentic stories.

The discussion at CEMEX that followed was moderated by Sarah Levine, an assistant professor at the GSE, and Lisa Goldman Rosas, an assistant professor at �� School of Medicine.

Kingsolver (left) and GSE PhD student Kelly Boles (right) hold up t-shirts spelling out the pronunciation of their home region. Appalachia has two different pronunciations across the United States. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

The importance of teachers

At the public event, Kingsolver emphasized that teachers played a prominent role in the book by introducing new ideas to students who’d only known one way, and encouraging the book’s main character, Demon, to cultivate his art.

“I think modeling reading for young children is very important, and what teachers do in the classroom is wonderful,” she said in response to an audience member, a high school English teacher who asked for pearls of wisdom regarding sparking a love for reading in students.

“English teachers are saints of the earth,” Kingsolver said. “You launch all of the future readers.”

“All of us here tonight were impacted by teachers in meaningful ways,” said Janet Carlson, faculty director of the GSE’s Center to Support Excellence in Teaching, who shared closing remarks at the event. “We want to make sure excellent teaching reaches everyone, not just those in places of privilege.”

Building bridges of compassion

Kingsolver said she likes to think of Demon Copperhead as her attempt at the Great Appalachian Novel: a history of how it became one of the poorest parts of the country, and the resilient, resourceful community of people who live there, through a story of a child.

“I wanted to write it for us, for my people, so we could see ourselves,” she said. “And I also wanted to write it for everybody else, so they could have a more nuanced view of who we are.”

Kingsolver said she first heard of �� when she was in her 20s, and by that time she’d learned to think she “had no business” in such places, assuming she’d be scorned for her accent and origins. Instead, she said, she found community – something she hopes will grow in place of stereotypes about people from where she grew up.

This event was co-sponsored by the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching, the DARE Doctoral Fellowship Program, the �� Haas Center for Public Service, and the �� Storytelling Project.

Kelly Boles, a GSE doctoral student who grew up in Central Appalachia, taught STEM students in one of the poorest congressional districts in the country. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

The event drew an audience of 400 �� and local community members to CEMEX auditorium. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

GSE Dean Dan Schwartz introduced the speakers at the event. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

Kingsolver, the author of more than a dozen books of fiction, essays, and poetry, shared her reverence for the power of literature. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

Kingsolver with Lisa Goldman Rosas (center) and Sarah Levine (right). (Photo: Rod Searcey)

An audience member addresses Kingsolver during the Q&A portion of the event. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

An audience member poses a question to Kingsolver. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

Boles and other students created a map of real places mentioned in the book. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

Janet Carlson, faculty director of the GSE’s Center to Support Excellence in Teaching, shared closing remarks at the event. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

Kingsolver with PhD student Kelly Boles. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

From left: Sarah Levine, Barbara Kingsolver, Lisa Goldman Rosas, and Dan Schwartz. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

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�� researchers partner with New York State to map the landscape of educational equity

Carrie Spector — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 19:57:52 +0000

�� researchers partner with New York State to map the landscape of educational equity

Carrie Spector Fri, 11/11/2022 - 11:57

A five-year collaboration aims to show how policies can be targeted to combat inequities in the school system. (Photo: Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock)

Data Science | Education Policy | Poverty and Inequality

The Educational Opportunity Project at �� and the New York State Education Department will study the impact of education policies.

November 14, 2022

The Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) at �� University and the New York State Education Department (NYSED) have launched a five-year project to map the landscape of equity across the New York State education system.

The aim of the project, in which researchers will leverage 15 years’ worth of data from NYSED, is to provide actionable information about how past and current education policies and practices impact equity in the school system.

The research team – including �� Graduate School of Education professors Sean Reardon, Ben Domingue, and Francis A. Pearman – will analyze student, teacher, school, and district data to develop a set of equity indicators that New York can use to monitor students’ access to educational opportunities within the education system. The team will analyze these indicators to understand whether inequities in access to opportunities – such as early childhood care and particular features of a school or neighborhood – are connected to disparities in students’ academic outcomes, including test scores and graduation rates.

“School systems have tremendous power to address disparities in educational opportunity through decisions they make on a regular basis,” said Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at �� and director of the EOP. “Our hope is that this project will show how system policies can be targeted to combat inequities, and that it will serve as a model for other partnerships between researchers and state education agencies.”

In addition to measuring and mapping out patterns of disparities among student outcomes and opportunities to learn, the researchers will assess the reliability and feasibility of using measures of such opportunities in the New York State data system to monitor educational equity. They will also provide evidence about specific features of the education system – including state-level policies and local strategic planning – that lead to greater equality in student outcomes.

Over the coming years, progress updates from this effort will be shared with, and feedback sought from, policymakers and education leaders throughout New York’s education system. The goals are to provide transparent information about educational equity in New York, and to inform state and local collaboration intended to address disparities in access to learning opportunities.

The project was presented at the New York State Board of Regents meeting on November 14, 2022.

The Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) Research Team

Core Researchers

Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality, �� Graduate School of Education
Erin Fahle, Research Scientist, NWEA
Andrew Ho, Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Ben Shear, Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Boulder

Collaborators

Ben Domingue, Associate Professor, �� Graduate School of Education
Francis A. Pearman, Assistant Professor, �� Graduate School of Education

Advisory Board

Susanna Loeb, Professor of Education and Director of the Annenberg Institute, Brown
Christopher Edley, Jr., Interim Dean, UC Berkeley School of Education
Rucker Johnson, Professor of Public Policy, UC Berkeley
Carrie Conaway, Senior Lecturer on Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

NYSED Leadership Team

Allison Armour-Garb, Special Advisor to the Executive Deputy Commissioner
Rose LeRoy, Director of Educational Data and Research
Jason Harmon, Deputy Commissioner, P-12 Operational Support
Zach Warner, Assistant Commissioner, Office of State Assessment
Alexander Trikalinos, Executive Director, Office of Educator Quality and Professional Development

The EOP-NYSED partnership and research activities are supported by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences, the Spencer Foundation, and �� Impact Labs.

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New research details the pandemic’s variable impact on U.S. school districts

Carrie Spector — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 20:34:46 +0000

New research details the pandemic’s variable impact on U.S. school districts

Carrie Spector Thu, 10/27/2022 - 13:34

Research by GSE Professor Sean Reardon and colleagues offers the first clear picture of pandemic learning loss at the school district level. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Education Policy | K-12 | Poverty and Inequality

Researchers produce an unprecedented map of trends in learning loss, revealing patterns that vary from one school district to the next.

October 28, 2022

By Carrie Spector

On the heels of new evidence of a nationwide decline in student achievement during the pandemic, a team of researchers at �� and Harvard released a detailed analysis today that brings the findings closer to home.

The Education Recovery Scorecard, published Oct. 28 by researchers at �� Graduate School of Education and the Center for Education Policy and Research (CEPR) at Harvard, combines local and national test score data to map changes in student performance over the past three years within individual school districts.

Their analysis is the first clear picture of pandemic learning loss at the school district level, revealing differences in the pandemic’s impact across U.S. communities.

Test scores released earlier this week from the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – widely known as the nation’s report card – showed, on average, a drop in math and reading scores between 2019 and 2022. But the analysis by �� and Harvard researchers shows how the losses varied from one school district to the next.

“In some school districts, students fell behind by as much as a grade level or more. In other school districts, the difference between the 2019 and 2022 test scores was essentially zero,” said Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality at �� Graduate School of Education and a senior fellow at the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research, who led the data analysis behind the Education Recovery Scorecard. “There was enormous variability in the pandemic’s impact on kids’ academic performance.”

In addition to creating interactive maps detailing the variability among districts, the researchers identified patterns in the relationship between student performance and the extent of remote learning in each district, as well as trends among racial and economic groups.

The Education Recovery Scorecard also provides a forecast of the likely long-term implications for students, and research on interventions that school districts could undertake to help students catch up.

“The pandemic was like a band of tornadoes that swept across the country. Some communities were left relatively untouched, while neighboring schools were devastated,” said Thomas J. Kane, a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and faculty director of CEPR, who co-led the analysis. “The Education Recovery Scorecard is the first high-resolution map of the tornadoes’ path, to help district leaders ascertain the magnitude of the damage and guide local recovery efforts.”

“There was enormous variability in the pandemic’s impact on kids’ academic performance.”

Sean Reardon

Professor of Poverty and Inequality, �� Graduate School of Education

Identifying patterns and differences

The district-level analysis indicates that the pandemic exacerbated educational inequalities based on income, showing the most pronounced learning losses among students in low-income communities and school districts.

The analysis also showed that test scores declined more, on average, in school districts where students were learning remotely than where learning took place in person. But the extent to which a school district was in-person or remote was a minor factor in the change in student performance, the researchers found.

“Even in school districts where students were in person for the whole year, test scores still declined substantially on average,” said Reardon, noting the toll that pandemic-related disruptions took on students’ routines, family and social support, and mental health. “A lot of things were happening that made it hard for kids to learn. One of them seems to be the extent to which schools were open or closed, but that’s only one among many factors that seems to have driven the patterns of change.”

The data analysis was conducted by the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University (EOP), an initiative launched by Reardon in 2019. The EOP houses the �� Education Data Archive (SEDA), a comprehensive national database of academic performance first made available online in 2016. Since then researchers have used the massive data set, which contains standardized reading and math test scores from students in every public school in the nation, to study variations in educational opportunity by race, gender, and socioeconomic conditions.

To generate a district-level analysis of pandemic learning loss, Reardon’s team applied an approach they developed to produce estimates of student performance that are comparable across places, grades, and years – a challenge given the discrepancy between assessments used in different states from year to year.

In addition to administering the NAEP every two years, all states are required to test students in third through eighth grades each year in math and reading, and to make the aggregated results of those tests public. Because most states use their own annual test (and define “proficiency” in different ways), researchers generally can’t compare these yearly test results from one state directly with results from another.

Reardon’s team developed a research method to overcome that challenge: By aligning the annual statewide test results with scores from the biennial NAEP, his team produces data that can be compared across states. “We use state tests to measure district-level changes in academic skills, and the NAEP test serves as a kind of Rosetta Stone that lets us put these changes on the same scale,” Reardon said. “Once we equate the tests from different states, we can make apples-to-apples comparisons among districts all over the country.”

Using demographic data also housed in SEDA, the researchers can estimate how scores within an individual district compare with statewide and national averages. They can also identify trends among various subgroups of students, including racial/ethnic and socioeconomic.

For the Education Recovery Scorecard, the research team obtained annual test scores from 30 states – all that have, to date, reported their districts’ proficiency rates for their spring 2022 assessments. The remaining states will be added to the analysis as their data becomes public.

Learning losses were most pronounced among school districts in higher-poverty communities, using the percentage of students eligible for free/reduced-price lunch as a proxy for poverty levels.

Recalibrating targets for recovery funds

The Education Recovery Scorecard also reports how much money each school district has received through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund, along with a summary of evidence on interventions that districts might implement, such as high-dose tutoring, summer school programs, extended school years, or even an optional 13th year of schooling.

The researchers hope the analysis will help policymakers and educators determine how best to direct pandemic relief funds and other efforts to support students who fell behind the most during the pandemic.

“Kids’ educational opportunities were really harmed in the past few years, and that damage was most pronounced in high-poverty communities,” Reardon said. “School districts are the first line of action to help children catch up. The better they know about the patterns of learning loss, the more they’re going to be able to target their resources effectively.”

Editor’s note: On May 11, 2023, the researchers released data for an additional 12 states that were unavailable when this story was published, as well as findings on the influence of additional community factors. The implications of the new findings were explored in an op-ed in the New York Times.

Additional collaborators on this project include Erin Fahle, Andrew Ho, Ben Shear, Demetra Kalogrides, Jim Saliba, Julia Paris, Sadie Richardson, and Thalia Ramirez (Educational Opportunity Project); Tyler Patterson (Center for Education Policy Research); and Douglas Staiger (Dartmouth College). The �� Education Data Archive (SEDA) and the Education Recovery Scorecard are based on research funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Education Recovery Scorecard also is supported by funds from Kenneth C. Griffin and the Walton Family Foundation. Some of the data used in constructing the SEDA files were provided by the National Center for Education Statistics.

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Poverty and Inequality

Financial literacy in school: Skills for the 21st century

New research reveals striking variations in pandemic recovery among U.S. school districts

Mapping trends in thousands of school districts

Widening achievement gaps

‘The rescue phase is over’

Supporting students: Housing, health, and education

Educational inequality: Post-pandemic patterns and trends

������������ event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, new research shows rise in school segregation

Assessing the rise

Policies shaping recent trends

New report shows historic gains in pandemic recovery for many U.S. school districts

Measuring losses and progress

An uneven recovery

Acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver talks about building ‘bridges of compassion’ through literature at ������������ GSE event

������������ researchers partner with New York State to map the landscape of educational equity

New research details the pandemic’s variable impact on U.S. school districts

�� event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

Acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver talks about building ‘bridges of compassion’ through literature at �� GSE event

�� researchers partner with New York State to map the landscape of educational equity