Having a teacher shortage comparison would help as well. After all, some states have allowed substitutes to take on full time teaching positions, while many others have reduced credential requirements (and started turning to for-profit credentialing companies). Some, like Florida, are even allowing former members of the military to be teachers with little-to-no other credentials. Keeping these factors in mind is also important in evaluating a state’s educational declines, as the pandemic has wreaked havoc on teacher hiring and retention (along with other pieces of legislation, like restrictive curriculums, book bans, etc.).
Fantastic and important analysis. I can’t wait for more state level data! A couple of questions/comments, though.
1. When comparing states, could you include a brief breakdown of their COVID policies? For example, how many districts went hybrid, how long hybrid was in place, state mandates around social distancing in schools, etc.
2. Which states had more room to fall. For example, if a state was at the top of the country in ELA scores before the pandemic, they, in theory, had more room to fall and therefore, may have had a larger decline but still rank higher than other states. This is an important distinction to make.
Another thing to keep in mind…
Having a teacher shortage comparison would help as well. After all, some states have allowed substitutes to take on full time teaching positions, while many others have reduced credential requirements (and started turning to for-profit credentialing companies). Some, like Florida, are even allowing former members of the military to be teachers with little-to-no other credentials. Keeping these factors in mind is also important in evaluating a state’s educational declines, as the pandemic has wreaked havoc on teacher hiring and retention (along with other pieces of legislation, like restrictive curriculums, book bans, etc.).
Fantastic and important analysis. I can’t wait for more state level data! A couple of questions/comments, though.
1. When comparing states, could you include a brief breakdown of their COVID policies? For example, how many districts went hybrid, how long hybrid was in place, state mandates around social distancing in schools, etc.
2. Which states had more room to fall. For example, if a state was at the top of the country in ELA scores before the pandemic, they, in theory, had more room to fall and therefore, may have had a larger decline but still rank higher than other states. This is an important distinction to make.
3. Also, it might benefit readers to know that while pandemic learning loss occurred, national scores were stagnate/declining (depending on state/area) before the pandemic began. In fact, such a decline was taking place for over 10 years. (https://hechingerreport.org/americas-reading-problem-scores-were-dropping-even-before-the-pandemic/).