Post-COVID student achievement has plummeted in NC. Why?

To describe state differences in educational outcomes, I have long relied on the Urban Institute’s analysis of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Few benchmarks are as consistent as NAEP’s reading and math tests, which are administered every two years to a representative sample of students in each jurisdiction. Urban Institute researchers then take those test scores and adjust them for demographics, allowing for valid comparisons between states that differ markedly in the percentage of disadvantaged students.

Before COVID, our state did well in the Urban Institute analysis. Average scores from the four tests included in the model — fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math tests — ranked North Carolina seventh in the nation in 2019, behind (in order) Massachusetts, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, Mississippi and Georgia. Among the top ten were Texas, Connecticut and Maryland.

In 2022, the top 10 states in demographically adjusted student achievement were, again in order, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Nevada and South Carolina. Unfortunately, our state was no longer among them. North Carolina fell to 29th. Among previously high-performing states, only Maryland suffered a larger drop.

Now, I know readers may be tempted to slap this bad news on the backs of their favorite hobbyhorses and ride them with reckless abandon.

See, critics of the state legislature will insist, it was foolish to prioritize tax cuts and opportunity grants over more dramatic increases in teacher pay and school funding!

Look, critics of former governor Roy Cooper will say, it was stupid of North Carolina to keep its schools closed for so long despite the lack of strong evidence that schools were a major vector of deadly diseases!

May I suggest less rock and more talk? You cannot answer complex policy questions with simple comparisons or correlations. Many factors shape academic performance. Only a few of them are in the schoolhouse, and even then the effects on student achievement are rarely as dramatic as the political rhetoric associated with them.

I happen to think that Cooper messed up the graduation issue, and that this probably helps explain why North Carolina’s test scores dropped so much. My opinion is based on research that holds other factors constant while comparing the length of layoffs to subsequent student achievement. But I admit that not all studies show large effects. I would like to see more evidence before jumping to a conclusion on the extent of the damage.

Additionally, other states that kept schools closed even longer than North Carolina fared better on the 2022 NAEP tests, both in terms of score averages and changes from 2019. It’s possible that other policy choices by states help explain variations in student achievement. It is also possible that NAEP tests administered in 2024 will show a different trajectory.

In the meantime, what the Urban Institute study can do is dispel some myths that continue to permeate North Carolina’s education policy debates.

First, no more making fun of the likes of South Carolina and Mississippi. Over the past decade, both have implemented major education reforms that changed the way teachers were trained and students were taught. Their students have not only surpassed ours. They have outperformed their counterparts in places like Connecticut, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

Second, no longer arguing that low-tax states like Florida and Texas must inevitably sacrifice the quality of public services on the altar of fiscal conservatism. Their schools ranked well not only in the latest study but in previous evaluations of NAEP data. Meanwhile, high-tax, high-regulation, low-growth states like New York and California don’t have better schools. They have worse schools – and usually worse performance in other public services.

I used to point out that North Carolina’s schools also ranked higher. No longer.