Educational Rights and Wrongs: How COVID-Related Student Math Achievement Losses Distributed and Implications for Equal Educational Opportunity

abstract:Comparing changes to school districts’ mean math achievement from 2019 to 2022 across 5,696 public school districts and 39 states provides critical information on how historic student achievement losses attributable to disruptions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic distributed. Core findings emphasize that while increased student access to in-person schooling during the 2020–2021 school year systematically corresponds with smaller student math achievement losses, per pupil spending variation does not. Student achievement losses were larger in school district’s with comparatively higher percentages of URM, IDEA-eligible, and low-income students, as well as in larger districts and districts that experienced enrollment turbulence. Student achievement decay’s uneven distribution raises equal educational opportunity concerns that are as troubling as they are obvious.