California still lags behind pre-pandemic reading and math scores on national assessment

EdSource's John Fensterwald reports on California's results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), released this Wednesday by NCES. In California, reading and math scores have continued to decline since the last assessment in 2022 and still fall short of pre-pandemic scores. CALDER's Dan Goldhaber, who got an early look at NAEP results as a member of IES's Standing Committee, highlights grade inflation related to the pandemic as a challenge to improving student achievement: "So the most immediate information that parents get is not state or NAEP tests. It's (high) grades that are not showing parents where their kids stand in real time, to allow them to provide feedback to their kids and encourage them."

To learn more about grade inflation before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, check out this CALDER Brief.