I hope a summary report with this info merged with closure times can be sent to Congress and possibly local govts. They need to know the impact of the closures and to see that states with sooner openings did better so they can stop blaming the pandemic itself and lay them blame where it belongs - on the closures.
Partly, but to blame educational slip/decline solely on the closure would be fallacious.
First, it would confuse causation with correlation. After all, ALL states saw educational declines, a trend that was occurring prior to the pandemic.
Second, Delaware fell more than other states illustrated in the data so far and yet, their proficiency levels are still on par with the others. What does that say about the state of education in various states before the pandemic?
Third, school closures and hybrid models were an understandable response to a novel, deadly virus. When the school year was set to reopen that first fall, we didn’t know how it would impact children, since they were pretty much the most protect group of people at the time.
After all, educational losses/declines can be recovered, but a life cannot be, and if the decision were presented again, I would hope that politicians would lean on caution rather than “it’s just the flu”. Because, there will be another pandemic.
Lastly, while children have fared well against COVID, many teachers did not. Unfortunately, few states were tracking COVID deaths in teachers. After all, kids can’t attend school if there are no teachers, and being “physically” present is irrelevant if it’s a sub, a custodian, or any other unqualified person “physically” there. Good teaching absolutely requires in person time, but it also requires good, qualified staff.
The pandemic also led to a teacher shortage, notably in many states that reopened quickest (but again, multiple factors are at play. Post-COVID policies like book banning, lawsuits, etc, are certainly hurting teacher retention and recruitment).
Interesting to see that Delaware fell so hard. Although, as if asked before, they also had further to fall than other states ecamined thus far. Likewise, their level of proficiency, in terms of ELA, is STILL on par with that of other states who made gains, further showing that they had further to fall in the first place.
Now, what would be really interesting, is to compare the actual tests, the questions, complexity, layout, type of administration, date of administration, difficulty, etc. Thanks to our federalist system, we have 50 different versions of state exams, and it would be interesting to see if “proficiency” meant the same thing in each state.
We're working on getting a version of these scores which would be comparable across states -- you've to to re-norm with the NAEP. At the moment, not comparable across states.
Right. How are you going to compare across states if tests are different, though? Each state uses their testing company, tests at different points of the year, and even different subjects. Having administered tests, as a teacher, in 3 different states, these tests have a large degree of variability, so I’m curious how you’ll norm when the validity and reliability of the tests is questionable. But I’m eager to continue following along with this data, despite the challenges I’ve presented in comparing them.
Great stuff. Question - have any of these states changed their proficiency cutoff scores?
No -- we've limited here to consistent state data
I hope a summary report with this info merged with closure times can be sent to Congress and possibly local govts. They need to know the impact of the closures and to see that states with sooner openings did better so they can stop blaming the pandemic itself and lay them blame where it belongs - on the closures.
Partly, but to blame educational slip/decline solely on the closure would be fallacious.
First, it would confuse causation with correlation. After all, ALL states saw educational declines, a trend that was occurring prior to the pandemic.
Second, Delaware fell more than other states illustrated in the data so far and yet, their proficiency levels are still on par with the others. What does that say about the state of education in various states before the pandemic?
Third, school closures and hybrid models were an understandable response to a novel, deadly virus. When the school year was set to reopen that first fall, we didn’t know how it would impact children, since they were pretty much the most protect group of people at the time.
After all, educational losses/declines can be recovered, but a life cannot be, and if the decision were presented again, I would hope that politicians would lean on caution rather than “it’s just the flu”. Because, there will be another pandemic.
Lastly, while children have fared well against COVID, many teachers did not. Unfortunately, few states were tracking COVID deaths in teachers. After all, kids can’t attend school if there are no teachers, and being “physically” present is irrelevant if it’s a sub, a custodian, or any other unqualified person “physically” there. Good teaching absolutely requires in person time, but it also requires good, qualified staff.
The pandemic also led to a teacher shortage, notably in many states that reopened quickest (but again, multiple factors are at play. Post-COVID policies like book banning, lawsuits, etc, are certainly hurting teacher retention and recruitment).
Interesting to see that Delaware fell so hard. Although, as if asked before, they also had further to fall than other states ecamined thus far. Likewise, their level of proficiency, in terms of ELA, is STILL on par with that of other states who made gains, further showing that they had further to fall in the first place.
Now, what would be really interesting, is to compare the actual tests, the questions, complexity, layout, type of administration, date of administration, difficulty, etc. Thanks to our federalist system, we have 50 different versions of state exams, and it would be interesting to see if “proficiency” meant the same thing in each state.
We're working on getting a version of these scores which would be comparable across states -- you've to to re-norm with the NAEP. At the moment, not comparable across states.
Right. How are you going to compare across states if tests are different, though? Each state uses their testing company, tests at different points of the year, and even different subjects. Having administered tests, as a teacher, in 3 different states, these tests have a large degree of variability, so I’m curious how you’ll norm when the validity and reliability of the tests is questionable. But I’m eager to continue following along with this data, despite the challenges I’ve presented in comparing them.