The big education story of the week is the surge of promising test score results being reported by districts including Denver, Chicago, Clark County (Las Vegas), and Massachusetts — a surprising bright spot to take into the new school year (Denver Gazette, Chalkbeat Chicago, Las Vegas Review Journal, Boston Herald, WBUR, Boston Globe).
“It’s not all doom and gloom,” writes AL.com’s Trish Crain, who reported one of the stories featured in the innovations section below. “There are actually a lot of bright spots. It just depends on which lens you’re using.”
To be sure, scores aren’t up a lot, in both math and reading, or everywhere. In many cases, they aren’t yet back up to where they were pre-pandemic and won’t be anytime soon without a big push in 2023-24 (Oregonian). “At the rate of improvement seen from 2022 to 2023,” notes the Globe, “it would take eight more years for students to fully recover to their pre-pandemic achievement levels.”