About the Project
Tom Kane at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard and Sean Reardon at Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project have collaborated to provide the first opportunity to compare learning loss and ensuing recovery at the district level across the country. Two years ago, we and others reported that by the time all states returned to regular testing in the Spring of 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 achievement. In this latest report, we describe the two years of post-pandemic recovery, between the Spring of 2022 and the Spring of 2024. 2024 Report
Without this research, parents and policymakers in all but the largest school districts (the 26 districts that participate in the NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment) would have no way to know how the national trends have touched their students. According to Learning Heroes, over 90% of parents still think their child is at or above grade level. And local policymakers—even if they see their own state assessment scores cannot know how their district’s performance compares to other similar districts in the country. (Moreover, in the at least 13 states that have changed their proficiency definitions since 2019, district leaders have no way to know if achievement has returned to pre-pandemic levels or not.) Our hope is that these resources will prompt states and school districts to plan ambitious local efforts, addressing the large and persistent losses in math and reading since 2019. The interactive maps and corresponding data you will find on this site provide insight on trends in academic achievement and chronic absenteeism. When available, achievement data are disaggregated by race and poverty status to provide a complete picture of the disparities in learning loss across the country.
Methodology
In the latest report, the researchers used test score results from roughly 11,000 school districts in 43 states to measure the extent to which test scores changed from Spring 2019 to Spring 2022 and from Spring 2022 to Spring 2024. The researchers used the methods developed by Reardon and colleagues to put the test scores from each state’s tests onto a common scale and to convert proficiency rates to “grade levels” of achievement (Reardon, Kalogrides, & Ho, 2021; Reardon, Shear, Castellano, & Ho, 2017). This allows us to measure changes in test scores between 2019 and 2024 on a common, interpretable scale for all school districts in these 43 states, despite the fact that they use different tests and proficiency thresholds.
Using these detailed data, the researchers report 1) the extent of academic recovery for each of the 43 states; 2) the extent to which the 2019-2022 losses and 2022-2024 improvements varied across school districts; and 3) how these patterns varied by district poverty rates and by student racial and economic background.
More detail on the methods used are available here: 2024 Report
of parents believe their child is at or above grade level Learning Heroes, B-flation report
of 4th graders are proficient in Reading NAEP
of 8th graders are proficient in Reading NAEP
of 4th graders are proficient in Math NAEP
of 8th graders are proficient in Math NAEP
Project Leaders
Thomas Kane
Walter H. Gale Professor of Education and Economics
Thomas Kane is an economist and Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research, a university-wide research center that works with school districts and state agencies. Between 2009 and 2012, he directed the Measures of Effective Teaching project for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His work has spanned both K-12 and higher education, covering topics such as the design of school accountability systems, teacher recruitment and retention, financial aid for college, race-conscious college admissions and the earnings impacts of community colleges. From 1995 to 1996, Kane served as the senior economist for labor, education, and welfare policy issues within President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. From 1991 through 2000, he was a faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government. Kane has also been a professor of public policy at UCLA and has held visiting fellowships at the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Sean Reardon
Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education
Seam Reardon is the endowed Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and Professor (by courtesy) of Sociology at Stanford University. His research focuses on the causes, patterns, trends, and consequences of social and educational inequality, the effects of educational policy on educational and social inequality, and in applied statistical methods for educational research. He particularly studies issues of residential and school segregation, and of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in academic achievement and educational success. His work develops methods of measuring social and educational inequality (including the measurement of segregation and achievement gaps) and methods of causal inference in educational and social science research. Professor Reardon is the director of the Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) and the developer of the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), a database of roughly 500 million 3-8th grade standardized test scores that provides measures of educational opportunity for nearly every public school, district, county, and state in the US. He received his doctorate in education in 1997 from Harvard University and is a member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also an Andrew Carnegie Fellow and the recipient of the William T. Grant Foundation Scholar Award and the National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship.
The Team
Atticus Bolyard
Research Analyst, Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University
Atticus is a Research Analyst at CEPR. He also works for the Proving Ground initiative and previously worked on projects related to the effect of educational attainment on health-related outcomes and the effect of noncognitive skills on education and health. Atticus graduated from William & Mary in 2019 with a BS in Math and Economics.
Daniel Dewey
Research Analyst, Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University
Daniel Dewey is a research analyst at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. He holds a M.A. in Applied Economics and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University.
Erin Fahle
Research Scientist, NWEA; Co-Director, Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University
Erin’s research explores how social and school context affects gender, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic inequalities in student’s access to educational opportunities and subsequent achievement. Dr. Fahle’s goal is to help states, districts, and schools identify areas for policy and practice interventions that can improve the educational circumstances of children across the U.S. She believes deeply that this work must be done in partnership with school leaders and is committed to designing research that reflects their perspectives. Her work has been published in Educational Researcher and the American Educational Research Journal and featured in media outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR. Dr. Fahle holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy from Stanford University, as well as a B.S. in Mathematics (2008) and a M.S. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics (2009) from Georgetown University.
Christina Grant
Executive Director, Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University
Dr. Christina Grant is the Executive Director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University.
Dr. Grant previously served as the District of Columbia’s State Superintendent of Education, where she played a pivotal role in leading the District’s response to the challenges posed by the pandemic. She spearheaded strategic initiatives aimed at fostering academic recovery across the education system, including significant investments in high impact tutoring, literacy, attendance, and high school redesign to prioritize immediate academic recovery efforts while laying the groundwork for sustainable improvements in educational outcomes overall.
Dr. Grant began her career as a public school teacher in Harlem and has since served as Superintendent of the Great Oaks Foundation, Deputy Executive Director at the New York City Department of Education, and Chief of Charter Schools and Innovation for The School District of Philadelphia.
Dr. Grant holds a doctorate in education with a focus on organizational leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, two master’s degrees—one in organizational leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University, and one in teaching and adolescent reading from Fordham University—and a bachelor’s degree from Hofstra University.
Andrew Ho
Charles William Eliot Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Andrew Ho is a Professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education and psychometrician whose research aims to improve the design, use, and interpretation of test scores in educational policy and practice. Dr. Ho is known for his research documenting the misuse of proficiency-based statistics in state and federal policy analysis. He has also clarified properties of student growth models for both technical and general audiences. His scholarship advocates for designing evaluative metrics to achieve multiple criteria: metrics must be accurate, but also transparent to target audiences and resistant to inflation under perverse incentives. Dr. Ho is a member of the National Assessment Governing Board that sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. He holds his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and his M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University.
Demetra Kalogrides
Research Associate, Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA)
Demetra Kalogrides collaborates on research with Professor Sean Reardon and works on the creation and analysis of the data in the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA). She received a B.A. in Sociology from Santa Clara University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Davis.
Micaela Keating
Research Analyst, Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University
Micaela Keating is a Research Analyst at CEPR. She also works on the Road to Recovery and Proving Ground projects. Prior to joining CEPR, Micaela was an Education Research Analyst at GBH. Micaela holds an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she focused her studies on quantitative analysis and applied educational research. She also holds a B.S. in Mathematics and B.S. in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Julia Paris
Research Assistant, Brookings Institution
Julia Paris is a Research Assistant at the Brookings Institution. She holds an M.A. in Public Policy and a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.
Thalia Ramirez
Operations Manager, Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) at Stanford University
Thalia Ramirez is the operations manager for the Educational Opportunity Project (EOP). She received a B.A. in Neuroscience with a minor in Teaching and Learning Studies from Wellesley College.
Sadie Richardson
Ph.D. student, Stanford Graduate School of Education
Sadie Richardson is a Ph.D. student at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. She received a B.A. from Rice University with a double major in Cognitive Sciences and Statistics.
Jim Saliba
Research Data Analyst, Educational Opportunity Project (EOP) at Stanford University
Jim Saliba is a research data analyst for the Educational Opportunity Project (EOP). Jim received a B.A. in Drama from Stanford University and M.A. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota, where they are completing their dissertation.
Lisa Sanbonmatsu
Director of Research, Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University
Lisa Sanbonmatsu is Director of Research at CEPR overseeing multiple projects. Prior to joining CEPR, Lisa was a senior researcher on the Moving to Opportunity project at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where she evaluated large randomized experiments and examined factors affecting the mental health, physical health, education, and economic outcomes of low-income families and their children. Lisa holds a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University.
Benjamin Shear
Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Boulder
Ben Shear is an Assistant Professor in the Research and Evaluation Methodology program at the University of Colorado Boulder, College of Education. His primary research interests address topics in psychometrics and applied statistics, including validity theory, differential item functioning, and the application of diagnostic classification models. His research in applied statistics seeks to improve the use of quantitative methods by education researchers measuring student learning, evaluating education policies, or studying inequality. He holds his Ph.D. in Development and Psychological Sciences from Stanford University and his M.A. in Measurement, Evaluation, and Research Methodology from the University of British Columbia.
Douglas Staiger
Professor of Economics Dartmouth College
Douglas Staiger is the John Sloan Dickey Third Century Professor in the Department of Economics at Dartmouth. Before joining Dartmouth in 1998, he was a faculty member at Stanford and Harvard. Dr. Staiger is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and an Affiliate of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT. He was the recipient of the Arrow Award for the best paper in health economics in 2007, and the Eugene Garfield Economic Impact of Medical and Health Research Award in 2008. Dr. Staiger is a co-founder, with John Birkmeyer and Justin Dimick, of ArborMetrix, a healthcare analytics company. He is currently an Associate Editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics. Dr. Staiger received his BA from Williams College in 1984 and his PhD in economics from MIT in 1990.
Dr. Staiger’s research interests include the economics of education, economics of healthcare, and statistical methods. His work has been published in both top economics journals (including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics) and top medical journals (including JAMA, and the New England Journal of Medicine). In the field of education, his current research investigates school and teacher effectiveness in elementary and secondary education, and has been funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences. In the field of healthcare, his current research investigates the quality of care in hospitals and labor markets for nurses and physicians, and has been funded by the National Institute of Health and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Sam Stockwell
Director of Communications, Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University
Sam Stockwell is Director of Communications and Strategy at CEPR.
Sam previously served as the Associate Director of Communications and Outreach at the Annenberg Institute, where he led communications and external relations efforts. Before joining Annenberg as a Research Project Manager on the EdResearch for Action team, Sam served as Federal Programs Coordinator for the Providence Public School District and Director of Admissions & Development at an independent school. Sam’s career started in youth development, where he founded a film and digital media program at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Dorchester and taught video production and photography.
Sam holds a BA in Communications from Gordon College and an MA in Urban Education Policy from Brown University.
Rachel Tropp
Communications Specialist, Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University
Rachel Tropp is the communications specialist at CEPR. Previously, Rachel worked as a research associate at Harvard Business School and a fellow for a workforce development nonprofit after receiving her AB in government from Harvard College with a secondary in educational studies.
Funder Info
The Education Recovery Scorecard receives philanthropic support from Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin and Griffin Catalyst, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Joyce Foundation.
The Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA) is based on research funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Some of the data used in constructing the SEDA files were provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The findings and opinions expressed in the research reported here are those of the authors and do not represent views of NCES or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.