Kids' test scores began declining way before COVID. These schools are making gains

Education Kids' test scores began declining way before COVID. These schools are making gains May 13, 202612:01 AM ET Cory Turner Jacob Stead for NPR The pandemic-era backslide in math and reading scores for students across the U.S. was not a sudden catastrophe but the continuation of a brutal, decade-long "learning recession" that began years before COVID-19's arrival. That's according to the latest Education Scorecard, an annual deep-dive into student data from The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research. The new Scorecard, released Wednesday and in its fourth year, offers several revelations for families, educators and policymakers looking for clarity — and hope — at a time when public education has been blamed and battered for those persistent declines in student performance. Sponsor Message Education Inflation is sucking the life out of teacher pay raises, report says Among the report's takeaways: Most states are finally making gains in math; federal relief dollars likely helped the lowest-income districts mount a hearty comeback; and, while most states have yet to make gains in reading, those that have all made legislative changes to how it's taught in their schools. Before we dive in, one caveat: The annual Education Scorecard includes data from the vast majority of states and Washington D.C. drawn from their own state tests — as opposed to the Nation's Report Card. But some states were excluded for various reasons, including if their state assessments had changed recently (Illinois, Kansas), if test opt-out rates were too high (New York, Colorado) or if a state didn't publish district-level data with enough detail. 'The learning recession' For nearly a quarter-century, from 1990 to 2013, math achievement among fourth- and eighth-graders "rose steadily," according to the Scorecard's analysis. So steadily that "the average fourth grader in 2013 could perform the same math skills as the...