(The Center Square) – Student progress during the pandemic was more negatively impacted in math than reading, says a report to be presented to North Carolina lawmakers.
Math assessments since show “a greater distance to the recovery thresholds both one year and two years later than reading.” Those findings are in an analysis prepared for the General Assembly from the state Department of Public Instruction and state Board of Education, in conjunction with the Education Visualization and Analytics Solution Team at SAS.
The report, 2023 Statewide Year-Over-Year Trends in Achievement: Before, During, and After the Pandemic, is part of the state board’s monthly meeting Wednesday. SAS Institute (or SAS, pronounced “sass”) is a multinational developer of analytics software based in Cary.
The report observes achievement in the most recent 10-year period. It uses three metrics to form the long-term trajectory of year-over-year achievement: prepandemic 2013-19; pandemic achievement in 2021, and how it diverged from the prepandemic trend; and achievement in 2022 and 2023, and how it diverged from a full recovery.
The report says in part, “This model uses a more sophisticated approach to determine state achievement than simple averages of scale scores or the percentage of student scoring proficient because it takes into account the year-to-year variation and trends in student achievement that existed prior to the pandemic.”
Among key findings, the report says most assessments had small positive or negative trends prior to the pandemic and were relatively stable.
Pandemic impact in 2021 “was negative for all assessments with the exception of English II, and the effect size ranged from medium to large depending on the assessment.” And, in terms of pandemic impact and recovery thresholds, there is “considerable variation among schools in the state.”
There will also be a segment of the meeting for the Education Innovation and Charter Schools Committee.
