How are students doing since COVID hit? Good luck finding out through your state's school report card

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Testing data from many sources suggests that students are still behind where they were before the pandemic, but it would be hard to tell from most states’ school report cards.

TO New study from the Center for Reinventing Public Education–CRPE–rated these state reports based on how easy it was to find information about student achievement from pre-COVID to today, as well as on their overall usability.

With a few notable exceptions, the center handed out fairly low grades.

Only seven states, including Michigan, Pennsylvaniaand Tennessee–earned an A for how easy it is to compare academic performance over time, and 21 received a D or F. New York, New Jerseyand Colorado It received a C and New York was among the worst states for usability. Illinois and IndianaOn the contrary, they received high marks for overall ease of use, but they don't make it easy enough to see changes over time.

As plain Much of the data paints a bleak pictureSurvey data shows Parents are not too concerned about academic recoveryA lack of easily accessible information could contribute to that complacency, said Morgan Polikoff, lead author of the study and a professor of education at the University of Southern California.

“We would all like to be behind us and think that things are back to the way they were before, but that is not the case,” he said. “Achievements are still lower than before COVID-19. Chronic absenteeism remains very high.”

Polikoff added that states and others “must provide parents with an accurate report on the performance of their individual students, but also on the performance of schools as a whole.”

For the center's report, researchers set out to find information in each state about student performance in English language arts, math, science, and social studies, as well as student growth (or the progress students made year over year) in English and math. They also looked for information about Chronic absenteeism or regular attendancehigh school graduation rates and English learner proficiency.

They accessed state-issued school report cards through a Google search and then attempted to figure out whether students were performing better or worse on these metrics than their pre-COVID counterparts.

The study found that many state websites make it difficult to know whether student performance is improving or deteriorating, and by how much. This is true even for states that report relatively well on the most recent data.

In contrast, some states that make longitudinal data available also had websites that were difficult to navigate, especially for users who wanted to see how subgroups, such as Black or Hispanic students or students with disabilities, were faring over time.

According to the CRPE report, this information could be “found with some ingenuity” on the Tennessee website. In Delaware, subgroup data and longitudinal data could be easily found separately, “but we could not find the intersection on the main web page.” The Michigan website was “complicated to navigate and sometimes slow to load.”

The researchers contrasted those states with Hawaiiwhich “has a beautiful and easy-to-use data visualization tool that produces exceptionally clear graphics.” Pennsylvania and Oklahoma They were also praised for their ease of use, as well as how easy they made it to see changes over time.

Polikoff said she came up with the idea for the analysis, which is part of CRPE’s annual State of the Student report, while looking for information on student performance with a different project in mind.

“I have a PhD and I’ve been doing this for 15 years,” she said. “If it’s this hard for me, how hard must it be for a parent or an advocate?”

Polikoff acknowledged that many parents will not have the time or inclination to seek out detailed information about the performance of students other than their own. But the persistence and prominence of school information on real estate listings, popularity of school rating sites as Great schoolsand parental involvement in public school choice programs suggest there is a demand for information about how well schools serve students, he said.

The report's authors recommend that states use more uniform systems for reporting student data and use other states that are already doing it well as models. The federal government could also provide templates rather than leaving each state to figure out the problem on its own.

“There is no reason to have 51 completely different report card models, and many of the most unusable report cards came from smaller or more rural states that might not have the internal capacity to create more engaging interfaces,” the authors wrote.

They also urged states to conduct more user testing of their websites and to be more transparent about the status of academic recovery, even when it is not good.

chalk rhythm It is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Related:
The lasting impact of the pandemic on young students
Years after pandemic closures, we are seeing their effects inside our schools
For more news on academic recovery, visit eSN's Education Leadership Center