Pandemic Achievement Loss: NAEP Long-Term Trend and Missouri MAP Assessment Changes
Key Points
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recently released the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Long-Term Trend (LTT) results. This special administration of the LTT assessment exclusively sampled a nationally-representative group of 9-year-old students and was intended to measure achievement changes during the pandemic in mathematics and reading. This brief highlight trends from the NAEP LTT overall and by student characteristics. While we cannot directly connect national findings, we examine the trends in MAP test scores for Missouri's 4th graders (typically 9-year-old students). Findings indicate:
From 2020 to 2022, NAEP LTT scores dropped by five and seven scale score points for math and reading respectively, an unprecedented decline which is likely linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nationally, lower-achieving, minority, and lower-SES students were all more likely to demonstrate larger declines in achievement on their assessments than were their peers.
From 2019 to 2021, Missouri’s 4th graders exhibited a seven-percentage point drop in the percent of students proficient or advanced in math; English scores were nearly unchanged.
In math, nearly 3 out of 4 (71%) 4th grade Black students scored below basic in 2021, compared to approximately 1 out of 2 students (53%) in 2019.
While declines between 2019 and 2021 were similar among FRL-eligible and FRL-ineligible students in math (10% and 9%), now only 1 in 4 FRL-eligible students score proficient or advanced (compared to approximately 1 in 3 FRL-eligible students in 2019). Nearly half (45.9%) of Missouri students were FRL-eligible in 2021 indicating a significant portion were likely affected by this decline in achievement.
