Latest Renaissance Study Shows Student Learning Loss Slowing in Fall 2021

Renaissance, a global provider of preK–12 assessment, literacy, and math solutions, has released the 2022 edition of its How Kids Are Performing report, showing that COVID-19 learning losses continued in Fall 2021 but appears to be slowing down, according to a news release.

The latest How Kids Are Performing compares performance and growth data from the first half of the current school year with data from the same period the year before, in K–12 reading and 1–12 math, documenting “the extent to which the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic continue to affect student achievement,” Renaissance said.

The report’s findings illustrate the pandemic’s “profoundly disruptive effect on education” that continues currently, with overall student performance in the second year of the pandemic coming in even lower than during the first year, Renaissance said.

But “there are encouraging signs in many grades” that student growth picked up in fall 2021 when compared to student growth rates during the fall 2020, the report stated.

The report includes student growth results by demographics and school groups as well as “concerning results” observed among first-graders’ development of foundational literacy skills.

The data used in the report relies on the same computer-adaptive Star Assessments for early literacy, reading, or math, from the 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 academic years, Renaissance said. The data included 4.4 million assessment results in early literacy or reading, from 19,046 schools, and 2.9 million math assessments from 12,754 schools, covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Renaissance said.

The full How Kid Are Performing report is available at Renaissance.com/How-Kids-Are-Performing.

About the Author

Kristal Kuykendall is editor, 1105 Media Education Group. She can be reached at [email protected].


Featured

  • Boxlight Intros Unified Solution for Campus Communication, Instruction, and Safety

    Boxlight has announced the debut of FrontRow UNITY and FrontRow UNITY Campus, a product that unifies solutions for institutional technology, campus communication, classroom audio, and emergency notification and response into a single device.

  • landscape photo with an AI rubber stamp on top

    California AI Watermarking Bill Supported by OpenAI

    OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, is backing a California bill that would require tech companies to label AI-generated content in the form of a digital "watermark." The proposed legislation, known as the "California Digital Content Provenance Standards" (AB 3211), aims to ensure transparency in digital media by identifying content created through artificial intelligence. This requirement would apply to a broad range of AI-generated material, from harmless memes to deepfakes that could be used to spread misinformation about political candidates.

  • NWEA Survey Tracks Progress of COVID Academic Recovery

    NWEA recently released the latest in a series of research reports studying the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on learning and academic recovery, according to a news release. The report incorporates data from the 2023–24 school year, and the results indicate that learning loss, unfinished learning, and low achievement gains — especially among middle schoolers — continue to plague students.

  • human figures interacting with a tablet, surrounded by floating geometric maintenance icons and faint outlines of campus elements

    Miami-Dade County Public Schools Rolls Out Facilitron Facility Management Platform

    Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) has announced a partnership with facility management systems provider Facilitron. MDCPS has about 350,000 students across 400 campuses and is the 19th Florida school district to use Facilitron’s platform.