[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-582843-105":59,"doc-detail-582843-en":131},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":124,"head_meta":126,"extra_data":128,"updated_unix":130},105,"en","the-widening-achievement-divide-during-covid-19","The widening achievement divide during COVID-19","","The brief analyzes how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the variability of students’ math and reading achievement, showing that spring 2022 results are more dispersed than spring 2019. It links the widening gaps primarily to differences between low and high achievers, where lower-achieving students faced larger initial setbacks and less improvement through 2021–22. The report also highlights worsening preexisting educational inequities and examines whether test-score losses were concentrated across the score distribution over multiple interrupted school years.",{"@graph":69,"@context":123},[70,84,106],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-widening-achievement-divide-during-covid-19/582843/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-widening-achievement-divide-during-covid-19/582843.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Rhys","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-12","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":105},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",13,{"@type":107,"mainEntity":108},"FAQPage",[109,115,119],{"name":110,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":112},"What did the brief find about changes in test-score variability between 2019 and 2022?","Question",{"text":113,"@type":114},"Math and reading test scores were more variable in spring 2022 than in spring 2019, indicating students differ more from one another than before the pandemic.","Answer",{"name":116,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":117},"What drove the increase in variability during the pandemic?",{"text":118,"@type":114},"The increase was primarily driven by a widened distance between low and high achievers, with students who started lower experiencing larger early impacts and less improvement during 2021–22.",{"name":120,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":121},"How did the brief compare achievement gains during COVID-19 to pre-pandemic trends?",{"text":122,"@type":114},"It compared growth patterns across three COVID-interrupted school years to pre-pandemic trends separately for students with the highest and lowest starting test scores, including longitudinal follow-up for top and bottom deciles.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":125,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":127,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":129,"site_id":62},582843,1792188479,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":132},{"doc_id":129,"user_id":133,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":134,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":135,"file_id":136,"file_url":137,"file_type":138,"file_size":139,"view_count":105,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":140,"language":141,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":142,"faqs":143,"seo_title":144,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":145,"read_time":41,"preview_page_count":4},687207024643,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_3d24733baf745e90a7e4bdd5f77d97b2","CENTER FOR SCHOOL  \nAND STUDENT PROGRESS  \nBRIEF  \nThe widening achievement divide during COVID-19  \nNovember 2022  \nKaryn Lewis, Megan Kuhfeld, Meredith Langi, Scott Peters, and Erin Fahle  \nKEY FINDINGS  \n• Math and reading test scores are more variable in spring 2022 than spring 2019, indicating that students—based on their current achievement levels—are more different from one another now than before the pandemic.  \n• Increased variability is primarily driven by a widened distance between low and high achievers given students with lower achievement experienced larger initial impacts at the onset of the pandemic and less improvement during 2021–22.  \nThe disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted students’ academic achievement in unprecedented ways. Numerous studies have documented that students’ math and reading test scores were significantly lower in the 2021-22 school year compared to a prepandemic year (e. g. , Betthäuser et al. , 2022; Kuhfeld & Lewis, 2022a) . Furthermore, the impacts of the pandemic have worsened pre-existing educational inequities. Specifically, the pandemic was more harmful for marginalized students of color and students attending high-poverty schools, who spent more time in remote instruction on average, and fell even farther behind their white, advantaged peers (Cohodes et al. , 2022; Goldhaber et al. , 2022) . Additionally, recent results from the NAEP Long-Term Trend (LTT) assessment show that test score decreases for 9-year-olds between 2020 and 2022 were greater for students in the lower end of the score distribution compared to the upper end (U. S. Department of Education, 2022) .  \nThe uneven impacts of the pandemic suggest that test scores may be more variable now compared toprepandemic trends, which implies teachers and schools will need to be equipped to address greater diversity in learning needs.1 In this brief, we examine how variability in students’ math and reading test scores changed across the pandemic, including whether increased dispersion was concentrated at one part of the test score distribution.  \nIn addition to examining whether test scores are more variable, we expand on recent findings from the NAEP LTT suggesting lower-scoring students have lost more ground and explore whether this is true for other age ranges. To do this, we compared growth patterns across the three COVID-interrupted school years relative to prepandemic trends separately for students with the highest and lowest test scores atthe start of the pandemic. Our prior work shows different impacts of the pandemic depending on initial achievement status: high achievers made gains between fall 2019 and fall 2021 that were more consistent with prepandemic normative trends whereas lower-achieving students were more likely to fall short of normative growth projections (Lewis & Kuhfeld, 2021) . Here, we continue to examine growth trends before and during the pandemic and disaggregate these trends according to initial achievement status to further show when and to what extent the distance between low and high achievers has widened.  \n¹ While we do not directly examine whether variability has widened in classrooms, we explore changes in within-and  \nbetween-school variation in Table 4 and Figure A1 in the technical appendix.  \nCENTER FOR SCHOOL AND STUDENT PROGRESS The widening achievement divide during COVID-19 | 2  \nThis research brief addresses two questions:  \n1) To what degree have students’ reading and math test scores become more variable as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?  \n2) How do achievement gains across the pandemic compare to prepandemic trends for students who were low-or high-achieving at the start of the pandemic?  \nTo address our first question, we examined how variability in test scores changed during the pandemic by comparing the test scores of students in grades 3–8 in spring 2022 with a same-grade sample of students tested in spring 2019. In total, this sample included data","cbCaip284pLj0XSJ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaip284pLj0XSJ","pdf",1898513,12,"English","# Key Findings\n# Overview and Research Questions\n## How variability changed across the pandemic\n## Comparing growth to pre-pandemic trends","[{\"question\":\"What did the brief find about changes in test-score variability between 2019 and 2022?\",\"answer\":\"Math and reading test scores were more variable in spring 2022 than in spring 2019, indicating students differ more from one another than before the pandemic.\"},{\"question\":\"What drove the increase in variability during the pandemic?\",\"answer\":\"The increase was primarily driven by a widened distance between low and high achievers, with students who started lower experiencing larger early impacts and less improvement during 2021–22.\"},{\"question\":\"How did the brief compare achievement gains during COVID-19 to pre-pandemic trends?\",\"answer\":\"It compared growth patterns across three COVID-interrupted school years to pre-pandemic trends separately for students with the highest and lowest starting test scores, including longitudinal follow-up for top and bottom deciles.\"}]","The widening achievement divide during COVID-19 | PDF",1792044654]