Did students fall behind this spring? Yes, but not as much as feared, new data shows

This summer, education organizations offered fairly dire predictions: Thanks to widespread school closures, students would be starting the school year dramatically behind. Chalkbear reports on newer data that indicates those projections were overstated. Most students did begin this school year behind where they would have been in math, test results show. But students didn’t fall as far as some projections suggested they would, and there is not consistent evidence that low-income students or students of color fell substantially further behind their white and affluent peers. That relatively good news comes with a significant asterisk. Fewer students than usual took the tests, and it’s possible that some of those “missing” students lost the most learning. The data also doesn’t tell us anything about learning during this school year, or about other kinds of harm done to students by the pandemic in the form of social isolation or failed courses. #education #racialequity