Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana and the District of Columbia have all posted sustained post-pandemic NAEP gains even as scores have fallen nationally, and they have done so with higher poverty rates and — except for D.C. — lower per-pupil spending than the national average. In three decades of testing, this is the first time a cluster of states has moved outcomes this way.
This from an Opinion article in the Washington Post today, following a series of stories for months now about these surprising test score numbers. Such stories have engendered many theories of what’s happening, and been grist for several often opposing POV.
As test scores for K-12 students in the US are derived from complex contexts that are not generally explicated in the stories covering the numbers, PSA uploaded this story to GPT6 Astra High for analysis, which follows below, and suggests “it’s complicated” as far as drawing conclusions.
However, this analysis doesn’t preclude saying these test scores are indicative on important takeaways on what’s working in the US after Covid. So Educators in other states where scores are notably lower do need to pay attention and examine what factors in their schools might account for the discrepancies.
The unknowns here have spawned all manner of speculation on the reliability of the scores …. and all manner of speculation about what the lower test scores states are “doing wrong”.
For example, is the problem too much EdTech, or too little? Bad teaching or bad students? Budgets spent on the wrong thing, or not enough, or too much? One can posit just about anything as “the cause” and not be contradicted by the facts which we don’t have as yet.
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