Assessment Results

Latest Renaissance Study Shows Student Learning Loss Slowing in Fall 2021

• By Kristal Kuykendall
• 03/28/22

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.