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Education Elements

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State of the Student Experience Report 2025

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Challenge Success

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The State Of Educational Opportunity in America:  A 50 State Survey of 20,000 Parents

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The State Of Educational Opportunity in America:  A 50 State Survey of 20,000 Parents

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Too Essential to Fail:  Why Our Big Bet on Public Education Needs a Bold National Response

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Too Essential to Fail:  Why Our Big Bet on Public Education Needs a Bold National Response

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Knowledge to Power Catalysts

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Report on the Condition of Education 2024

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Report on the Condition of Education 2024

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IES

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nces.ed.gov

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A series of concise data tables that provide an overview of Condition of Education topics and findings and allow readers to quickly make comparisons within and across indicators.

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Governors' Top Educational Priorities in 2023 State of the State Addresses

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Governors' Top Educational Priorities in 2023 State of the State Addresses

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Education Commission of the States

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Educational Recovery SCORECARD

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Governors' Top Education Priorities in 2024:  State of the State Addresses

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Governors' Top Education Priorities in 2024:  State of the State Addresses

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Education Commission of the States

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Every Learner Everywhere

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Hanover Research

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SORA

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The First Year of Pandemic Recovery: A District-Level Analysis

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The First Year of Pandemic Recovery: A District-Level Analysis

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The State of Kids and Families in America 2024

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Common Sense

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A New Narrative:  How Inclusive Innovation Unlocks the Power of R&D to Transform Education

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A New Narrative:  How Inclusive Innovation Unlocks the Power of R&D to Transform Education

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edsurge.com

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"Education is made for students. There is no one who knows what students need more than us." - Angelica Martinez, 2023 Graduate, Sunnyside Unified School District (AZ)
Historically, research institutions, education entrepreneurs and technology developers have led the research and development (R&D) of education programs and tools. The distance between the "consumers" (the learners and families) and the "creators" (the product developers) has been wide, contributing to an R&D process largely uninformed by those most impacted by inequitable conditions.

Since its inception, the Digital Promise Center for Inclusive Innovation (CII) has focused on bridging that distance by engaging educators, students, families and communities in co-leadership, co-research and co-design of education solutions.

To be clear, community-based organizations have led proximity-centered efforts to transform education for many years. The CII focuses on investing in R&D capacity-building to enable educators, students and families to create solutions with researchers and developers to sustain the work.

Our work is anchored in the following provocation:
"What if the solution to inequities in education resides in foundational shifts - in mindsets, in proximity, in collaborations - and, ultimately, in the co-research and development of equitable, powerful learning with those most impacted?"

Humility is one of the most important characteristics of the superintendency, especially in Inclusive Innovation. Superintendents must be listeners and learners to have the capacity to sit back and let others lead. It's important to have leaders get out of the way and just be there to support the champions of the work.

- Dr. Michelle Miller

In years of collaboration on Inclusive Innovation, we've seen crucial mindset shifts, fostering proximity and collaboration, resulting in novel solutions centered on the voices and leadership of students and families that have been historically and systematically excluded.
The Tenets
Now, we are sharing the stories, solutions and results of this work in our paper, A New Narrative: How Unlocking the Power of R&D through Inclusive Innovation Can Transform Education. Through the words of superintendents, district leaders, teachers and students engaged in the Inclusive Innovation model, and in showcasing the solutions they have co-created, we demonstrate the tenets that drive the work, the resulting R&D shifts and the solutions and outcomes that have emerged.

Often, we speak of the importance of including student and community voices in R&D, but the methods for doing so tend to focus on gathering feedback, which limits the contribution and role of students and families and their influence on education solutions. Effectively centering R&D in students and community requires engaging in new ways of thinking, collaborating and creating - essentially building muscles that enable true co-research and co-design to take shape with those not traditionally included or formally trained in R&D but whose crucial expertise grounded in their lived experiences mean they have a rightful place in the process.

The six tenets that guide Inclusive Innovation research and development

The Shifts
Core to Inclusive Innovation is a set of six tenets: four practice tenets that guide the day-to-day process of engaging in R&D and two impact tenets that guide the outcomes. Additionally, we have developed a set of principles and capacities aligned to each tenet to create the conditions for mutually beneficial engagement.
"Humility is one of the most important characteristics of the superintendency, especially in Inclusive Innovation. Superintendents must be listeners and learners to have the capacity to sit back and let others lead. It's important to have leaders get out of the way and just be there to support the champions of the work."
There is no better articulation of the shifts that occur than the Teaching Is My Favorite Color initiative, involving three districts in southwest Pennsylvania focused on the recruitment and retention of a diverse educator workforce led by educator Deshanna Wisniewski. Dr. Michelle Miller, superintendent of South Fayette School District (Pennsylvania), describes the role of district leaders in this work:

This is one example of many in our paper that demonstrates how those with traditional power - leaders, researchers and solution developers - emerge from the Inclusive Innovation and adapt to support the leadership of teachers, students and families in the R&D process. These shifts we have documented have resulted in barriers dissolving between districts and communities, district leaders engaging in shared leadership, teachers and parents working as collaborators to solve challenges and students co-creating learning experiences.
The Solutions
This approach to R&D can offer a new way for schools and communities to move forward collectively as partners in support of student success.

Inclusive Innovation influences the ideas and concepts that emerge as solutions. As a result, the solutions are not the typical products or tools. Because they are designed by those experiencing barriers to teaching and learning, they reflect how educators can support students' needs. Examples include:

Journey maps exemplify the phases of Inclusive Innovation and how the work progresses through the R&D process, from the first phase of building trust and relationships in Connect & Commit to expanding solution implementation in Sustain & Scale. An example journey map of the effort in Middletown City Schools to increase the number of Black male educators through their Admiral Squad initiative is below.
The Emerging Outcomes

Example journey map

Related Resources:

The research to capture, analyze and document the outcomes involves an ongoing process to understand both qualitatively and quantitatively the impacts of the work. We focus on understanding the shifting mindsets, power dynamics and relationships that result from co-leadership, research and design, as well as the progress towards community-defined outcomes arising from the implementation of the solution.

Over 800 students, reflecting a uniquely diverse student population, enrolled in our inclusive Cybersecurity pathways initiative across 10 school districts - 25 percent female, 12 percent with learning differences, 43 percent free and reduced lunch, 54 percent students of color.

A 15 percent increase in students' engagement and completion of social studies research papers inspired by student-created writing activities designed to boost students' confidence, interest and skills in writing.

Over 40 teachers participating in student-led mental health professional development in one district and efforts to start scaling the model within and beyond the district.

A 25 percent increase in the recruitment of Black male educators in a district.

To date, the solutions created by the districts, students and communities have resulted in:

We invite you to learn more about the Inclusive Innovation journey by reading our paper and joining us as we collaborate with the League of Innovative Schools and districts across the country to bring the power of R&D closer to schools and communities.

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A New Narrative: How Inclusive Innovation Unlocks the Power of R&D to Transform Education - EdSurge News

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"Education is made for students. There is no one who knows what students need more than us." - Angelica Martinez, 2023 Graduate, Sunnyside Unified ...

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The Future of American Education:  Next Generation Ideas for the Nations Schools and Colleges

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The Future of American Education:  Next Generation Ideas for the Nations Schools and Colleges

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FutureEd

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2023 State of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging

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2023 State of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging

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Hanover Research

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Building Bridges Initiative September 2023

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Closing the Opportunity Gap in Washington's Public Education System

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Closing the Opportunity Gap in Washington's Public Education System

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EOGAC 2023 Annual Report

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Top 5 Questions K-12 Administrators Are Asking This School Year to Ensure Success

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Otus

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Can a Growth Mindset Help Students Achieve Their Potential?  

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Can a Growth Mindset Help Students Achieve Their Potential?  

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apa.org

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Kim Mills: Are you good at math, or stumped by basic algebra? Hopeless at spelling, but a great test taker? You may have a sense, perhaps instilled early on at school, of your academic ability as a fixed and immutable trait. Something that you were born with, like the color of your hair or eyes.

But over the last several decades, research has suggested that thinking of intelligence this way can sap students' motivation in school and contribute to racial, gender, and socioeconomic achievement gaps. After all, a kid might think, "If I'm bad at math, why should I sign up for an advanced class? Or if I'm not really smart enough to be in college, what's the point of trying?" In contrast, having a growth mindset, a belief that intelligence and ability can develop and increase with practice, can help keep students motivated when they face challenges.

The concept of a growth mindset has made the leap from the psychology lab to popular culture and even become something of a buzzword in education. But it's also attracted controversy over how much of a difference growth mindset really makes to student achievement. So where is the research now? Can relatively simple interventions, which are exercises really, that reframe students' thinking about their own abilities, help close achievement gaps? Whom do these interventions help most, and how can they be deployed effectively?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. Our guest today is Dr. David Yeager, an associate professor of developmental psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and cofounder of the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute.

Dr. Yeager began his career as a middle school English teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but became interested in the science of helping students thrive and returned to graduate school to study with Dr. Carol Dweck, the founder of growth mindset theory. Over the past two decades, Dr. Yeager has studied how to design and implement effective growth mindset interventions, a type of mental exercise that we'll talk more about that help teens overcome psychological barriers that stand in the way of their success. He often focuses on helping students during times of transition, such as the transition to middle school, high school or college. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Yeager.

Dr. David Yeager: Thank you for having me.

Mills: Let's start with a definition, which we frequently do on Speaking of Psychology. What is a growth mindset? How does it differ from a fixed mindset?

Yeager: So a fixed mindset is the belief that intellectual ability is just fixed. You have a certain amount of it and that's it. That's who you are and that's who you'll stay. That mindset can make challenges and mistakes more threatening, because they can reveal deficiencies in your permanent ability. A growth mindset is the belief that students can develop their intellectual abilities through hard work, good learning strategies, and lots of help from others and lots of support and opportunities. So in a growth mindset, taking on challenges and learning from mistakes become ways to develop your abilities.

Mills: And keeping with explaining our terms, what is a growth mindset intervention? Intervention is one of those words that psychologists like, but I'm not sure that it's really understood by nonpsychologists.

Yeager: A growth mindset intervention simply exposes young people to the true idea that all learning changes us, and that learning is possible throughout the lifespan. The way we often accomplish this is by drawing on neuroscience actually. We explain that learning happens in the brain, that the brain grows new connections when it learns new challenging concepts. And furthermore, that changes in our knowledge and in our brain are possible under the right conditions and with the right support.

So how do you teach this information? Well, you can't just give a dry lecture on neuroscience, that doesn't work. Instead, what you need to do is to invite young people into the world in which those ideas could be true. And the way you do that is by providing short but compelling summaries of the scientific information from, and we summarize real studies from neuroscience and the science of human learning. But more importantly, we give them stories, stories of people who in the past have encountered difficulty, have overcome that difficulty by continuing to persevere and develop their skills. And where it becomes true in their experience that learning is possible.

The last thing we do in the intervention is we ask participants to tell their own stories. How could this information help you to address and overcome your own intellectual challenges? Imagine you're a future student coming to ninth grade, starting algebra 1, wondering if you'll ever figure out how to factor trinomials. In that moment when you feel dumb at math, how could you think back on the idea that intelligence is actually not fixed, it's something that can be developed? And what we find is that students love the idea of using their story to inspire future students who might go through the same trials and tribulations. So the intervention is not months or weeks long, it's intentionally short and efficient. So that way adolescents have the chance to read the ideas, understand them, and internalize them, without it feeling like people are telling you what to think or telling you how to behave.

Mills: What were the changes that you were able to measure when you administered this intervention? I know that you had a very large cohort of people you brought together and administered the intervention and you came up with some pretty interesting results.

Yeager: Yeah, that's a great question. So in the early days, in the laboratory studies, researchers would give participants a growth mindset article and writing exercise, or a fixed mindset writing exercise and article. And then maybe moments later asked them how much they believed intelligence could change, they'd measured their mindset. And maybe they'd give them a really hard puzzle to solve and tell them it's measuring their intelligence and see if people quit that puzzle or not.

Once we started realizing that this idea had a little bit more power to potentially shape real-world behavior, we started going into real high schools and delivering this intervention and immediately afterward giving them a choice. The choice was, would you like to do more math problems today that will be very difficult, will push you to your limits, but might teach you something new? Or would you like some math problems that are very easy because they cover content you've already mastered, but you'll get to look smart because they're the kind of problems that you know the answer to?

And what we found is that first of all, American teenagers in a very large study we did overwhelmingly chose the easy problems, not the hard problems in the control group. And that's interesting, because when I was a teacher, I spent all my time coming up with really demanding and rigorous learning opportunities. I wanted to have that challenging stand and deliver type curriculum. And yet, many of my students might shy away from that. And in fact, we find nationally many students shy away from that.

What happened in the treatment group when students got the growth mindset? What we found is rather striking increases in the rate at which students said, "Give me the hard problems. I want the ones that are going to teach me something new, even if I might sacrifice the chance to look like the smartest." And so that is one example of a kind of learning-oriented behavior that just feels more reasonable in a growth mindset. By the way, in the study I just described, we had schools across the country. We randomly selected public high schools across the U.S. and gave them this task. We call it the make a math worksheet task. And we found that pretty much consistently across the country, no matter what group students were from, what schools they're in, growth mindset made students more willing to choose the hard math problems versus the easy math problems.

Mills: So one of the aspects of your work that's really interesting, I think, is that the interventions that you're working with appear to decrease racial, socioeconomic, and other achievement gaps. Can you talk about that? Are growth mindset interventions most effective for students who are more at risk, or do they work for everyone?

Yeager: In the study I just described, we find pretty consistently growth mindset will change as long as students pay attention. It will change their attitudes and their behavior moments later. The interesting part is, what happens if you come back three months, five months, six months, 10 months, 12 months later? Are students' grades higher? Are they taking the harder math courses? If they're college students, are they still full-time students? What we find in general is that overall students' grades tend to increase and they tend to take harder math classes. But especially the grade effects are more striking for students who previously had lower grades, which in the U.S. are often students who are from families that have fewer socioeconomic resources, or students from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds.

In the college-going studies we find the same kinds of results. So students of color and first-generation college students tend to benefit more in terms of their grades and course taking from the growth mindset compared to students from more advantaged backgrounds. The scientific puzzle though is, well, do the advantage students not need the mindset? Are they not listening to it, or is something else going on? What we think is that students from groups that are negatively stereotyped in our society have to confront a lot of fixed-mindset messaging. In fact, the idea that some groups are just inherently smarter than others is an explicit part of our country's history with segregation. In fact, that's a key part of the ideology that justified segregation prior to Brown v. Board.

And so in many ways, what a growth mindset can do is allow a student to have a little bit of a reprieve from very prominent and prevalent ideas that to this day persist about members of minority groups. And it may allow them to see themselves in this, given the educational setting, as having the potential to grow and develop. So that's why we think that growth mindset is a promising way to try to address some of the persistent racial or socioeconomic inequalities. But we don't think it's the only way, and we certainly don't think it's a silver bullet.

Mills: Have you only administered these interventions with respect to mathematics, or are you doing it in other subjects as well?

Yeager: We often do the interventions completely separate from content areas. So you might get it in health class, or PE class, or geology class. There's nothing about the intervention that needs to be delivered in a content area, but we often find effects in the most rigorous and anxiety-inducing classes. Because those are the classes where students are most at risk for experiencing fixed mindset cultures. So there's another point that's a little, not as interesting, which is simply that there's grade inflation in English and history in U.S. public high schools. And almost everyone gets an A already. So even if the treatment was working, it's harder to find out if it's working because the control group is already getting straight As and the treatment group can't do any better.

Mills: The measurement in math class is much more precise.

Yeager: Yeah, the GPA in math is like 2.3 and in English it's like 3.0 on a four point scale.

Mills: I understand there was some criticism in some corners that the paper that you published in Nature didn't include the intervention that your colleagues administered to students. Why would you have left it out? And how does somebody get a copy if they want to use this technique?

Yeager: Yeah, I never understood that. A third of the intervention is in the online supplement, so people can see all the important parts. The whole thing is available through our population research center, and that's listed in the article. So I never understood the motivations of people who wanted to claim that, and it's kind of a weird myth that persists. The truth is that, if you make it freely available then private companies will take it and sell it and say, " Nature already showed this works." And then there'll be lots of deceptive marketing around a really promising idea, and claims being made about what we're doing. And so anyone who wants to do research with it can access it. We just don't allow private companies or people who are going to misuse the materials to use them without requests.

I mean, it's like saying you read a paper on the COVID vaccine and you can't download the COVID vaccine, that's what it's saying. Because of course the companies who develop the COVID vaccine should then own the intellectual property and people can replicate the results if they'd like. But it doesn't mean that anyone who reads the paper is entitled to proprietary information. So I just never understood that. But I do think it's critical at a higher level for people to continue to replicate. And we have, we have lots of independent replications, we've shared it. But also to develop new materials and make them better. And I think we welcome any scientific inquiry to improve the materials and to try to understand how to improve people's lives.

Mills: Well, that makes sense. And I certainly just wanted to raise that because I had heard that that was your response as well. You're also studying growth mindset in teachers, right? And whether teachers' understanding of mindset makes a difference in their students' outcomes, what are you finding?

Yeager: In our national study done in the U.S., the first pass at which was published in Nature, we looked at school cultures and found that school cultures undermine the treatment effect if they support more fixed mindset behaviors. But school cultures enhance the treatment effect if they support more growth mindset behaviors. So if you go back to that worksheet task I mentioned where students can choose the easy or the hard problems, there are some schools where in the control group, students are already saying, "Yes, give me more hard math problems." And some schools where they're saying, "No, I want the easy problems." And you can, reading between the lines, it's as though kids might be made fun of for raising their hand and saying, "Yes, math teacher, please give me harder math problems."

And before we did the study, we didn't know in which kind of school the treatment would work better or worse. So would it work better in the schools that have supportive peer norms, because the peers need to reinforce the short mindset message? Or would it work better in the schools that have unsupportive norms, because that's where you need it the most?

And we kind of had a debate between the psychologists and the sociologists on our team. Sociologists, as you know, think about the context. They want to think about social structures and focus less on the individual. Psychologists, our bias is that we kind of put too much on the minds of the individual and underemphasize the importance of organizations. And what did we find? It turns out that sociologists were right. The sociologists predicted that the supportive norms would be necessary to sustain the mindset intervention. And that's what the data showed.

And the next study, the next follow-up paper that hopefully will come out soon, we zoomed in on the classroom. We surveyed teachers and asked them about their mindsets. And what we found is that when teachers reported more of a growth mindset, that's where you got bigger treatment effects. When teachers reported more of a fixed mindset, you got nothing. In both kinds of classrooms you can change the mindset, you can change the behavior, but you don't change the grades at the end of the year, unless the teacher has a supportive growth mindset.

So what are we doing now? Well, instead of just saying, "Well, it looks like you can't give the treatment unless in a supportive context," which would be kind of a disappointing conclusion if you want to use the treatment to address problems with motivation, we're instead saying, "How can we begin to change classroom culture? How can we change the peer culture and the teacher beliefs, so that in places where previously the treatment would not have worked, now the treatment could work?"

And it turns out that's a very hard question to answer. Because now we're thinking of changing adults in their professional roles. And as everyone knows, it's hard to change adults, especially in our professional settings. Adults are nested within bosses who have certain expectations. Teachers for instance, are beholden to the school boards that they're in. They have many demands on their time. They're constantly being asked to do whatever the latest policy fad is. And so rather than kind of throw up our hands and say, "We're just going to have to take it that the treatment doesn't work in certain settings," we're trying to mobilize scientists and practitioners to look at the problem of teacher behavior change and the cultures they create as the next great scientific challenge. And I think it's essential that we do it if we're going to meet the demands of overcoming the current crisis we're in with respect to education and student engagement.

Mills: What, if any, work is happening about getting this concept into curriculum for people who are studying to become teachers?

Yeager: I've often thought that growth mindset should be a part of teacher education. And it is in many ways. However, researchers, we kind of need to get our act together and provide more direct evidence for teachers who want to use growth mindset on a daily basis as a part of their routines and rituals. And we haven't yet provided the guidance that teachers need, I think, to implement these ideas with fidelity and with high impact. We have far more confidence in the student mindset interventions because of the level of testing and evaluation. But on the teacher side, what are the practices they need to have? Is it enough to put up a poster on the wall to say, "Have a growth mindset"? Or does something deeper need to happen? So I think schools of education are a beautiful means for using this evidence. And I think there's a hunger for it because of the growing attention to social and emotional learning. But the research really needs to be accelerated and we need to start learning from expert practitioners so that we can do it more quickly.

Mills: So I mentioned in my introduction that you often focus on helping students at times of transition, like when they're starting high school or college. What role does timing play in these interventions?

Yeager: I'm a developmental psychologist primarily, and I'm informed in part by classic models of the importance of a life transition. Glen Elder is a classic sociologist who developed these ideas, along with my mentor, Rob Crosnoe. And what we think that transitions do is they create an openness to new ways of thinking and new habits. So an example of a transition is transition from middle school to high school or high school to college. But other transitions are from not having children to having children. From being in the military, back into civilian life or vice versa. From going from civilian into military life.

And each of these examples and in many others, what you see is that you're in a new role that you don't quite know how to master. And you see lots of ambiguity. You see supervisors who are giving you feedback. Does this mean they believe in me or that they're going to kick me out? You may have a hard time finding the right people to rely on, to turn to, right? You may not know if the abilities you have now are ever going to be up to the level that they need to be to succeed in this new setting. So there's a lot of discomfort, a lot of questioning, a lot of ambiguity. In those moments we think that seemingly small differences in your overall belief system can lead to self-reinforcing cycles and positive or negative directions.

Let's take the example of a ninth grader in the fixed mindset in this transition to high school math, right? High school math should be harder than your middle school math if it's doing its job. It's supposed to be preparing you for the next level, right? But a student with a fixed mindset may interpret that as, "Wow, this class is harder than what I could do. I should drop maybe to the lower level class. Or I should be ashamed of how much I don't know and I should keep that lack of knowledge a secret. I shouldn't study in groups. I shouldn't raise my hand" and so on.

And so the interpretation of the difficulty leads to early stage behaviors that then cause a student to underperform on the next quiz or test. Now they've underperformed on the quiz or test they may say, "Wow, I guess I was right. I'm not that smart at this." And that's this-so the worry becomes reluctance to behave in a prolearning way, which becomes low performance, which becomes evidence that feeds into more worry, right? That's what Jeff Cohen calls a recursive process.

So in a growth mindset though a small shift in a belief about the meaning of difficulty could lead a student to interpret that same early challenge at the beginning of ninth grade, as a normal part of meeting ambitious learning goals. "I chose a hard math class because I believe in myself and I want to go far. This math, of course it's hard, this is a challenging course. And I see many other students who are also struggling. If I continue doing the work and ask them for help, then I'm going to get better at this and then I'll be ready for the next challenge and I'll feel confused then, right?"

Student may then go to the teacher and say, "I'm struggling on this one thing. Can you help me explain it?" Or to peers, "You guys understand this. Can you tell me how you got it?" The student with a growth mindset may not fear the same kind of shame, may not have the same kind of worries. And then the small behaviors that lead to the better performance, that then becomes positive evidence and leads to less worry about ability. And that's what Geoff Cohen calls a positive recursive process.

So it's not like we think growth mindset doesn't matter at other times, but we think that when there's so much up in the air in a life transition, that's the time where a small difference in beliefs or like a Bayesian base rate can lead to a just slightly different probability of either a prolearning or an antilearning behavior that over time could become self-reinforcing.

Mills: There's another theory in psychology that's gotten a lot of attention recently, Angela Duckworth's concept of grit. And I'm just wondering, what's the difference between growth mindset and grit? Are they related?

Yeager: Well, they're correlated-I mean, almost every good academic behavior is correlated with almost every other good academic behavior. You know, they are different concepts. Angela would argue, and I think it's probably true, that growth mindset is one possible antecedent of grit. And one way to promote gritty persistence in the face of failure is to help people believe that that failure is not debilitating, but instead is a means through which you can become stronger.

I think the differences between the two concepts mainly stem from the different traditions that they come from. Grit is kind of coming from a personality individual differences perspective. What explains variation in people's performance over time, especially among people who are already positively selected to be good at a thing. So among West Point Cadets, what distinguishes West Point Cadets who continue versus not. Among elite spelling bee people. What distinguishes people who win the spelling bee versus coming 20th, right? And grit I think really plays a role in those types of settings.

Mindset is coming out of a social cognitive tradition. And what I mean by that is, it's more about the ways that we interpret the world, the meaning we make out of it, more likely to be socialized by the things we overhear our parents say, that we see on TV, about ability and so on. And those different traditions are not superficial because they actually lead to different predictions about how to promote the different constructs. So I would say that grit and growth mindset are very friendly cousins, and they predict different things and they work in different ways, but they get together for family reunions all the time.

Mills: I like that image. You talk about, in your research you had this huge cohort of students from across the country. Are you looking to implement the same kind of testing with students in other countries? I'm just wondering, because as you talk about American students wanting to take the easy way out, might it be that students in other cultures would behave differently just from the get-go? Are you looking at that?

Yeager: Yeah, I'm really glad you raised that, because just last week, the OECD-

Mills: Oh, you're going to have to explain that OECD.

Yeager: Yeah, OECD is an international economic development organization. So there are 78 or so nations in the world that are considered OECD nations. And OECD provides guidance on things like healthcare and education. But one of the important things they do is they administer an international test called the PISA, P-I-S-A. And in 2008 they had 600,000 students from around the world. And in each nation that they collected data from, they had about four to 6,000 students that were randomly selected from the population. So we're talking random samples from all developing countries in the world. And those students in that test completed a comprehensive assessment of reading and math skills, but they also completed a very long survey. And on that survey was some growth mindset measures, and also measures where students rated the mindset supportiveness of their teachers. So what did the PISA find in their report?

Well, first they find that growth mindset predicts achievement around the world. In something like 72 out of 77 nations growth mindset positively predicts higher test scores among 15-year-olds, which is what we focused on often in our research. So that's really interesting. Well, what about the countries where growth mindset does not predict test scores? Interestingly, they're almost all East Asian countries. So three of them are regions of China and it's like, "Okay, that's interesting." Well, does growth mindset not matter in East Asian cultures? That doesn't seem right, because certainly the fixed mindset fear that you're not smart could be stressful for anyone.

But it turns out that the PISA has discovered a secret to the puzzle. As it happens, that in countries where mindset does not predict test scores, mindset predicts well-being the best. So a fear of failure, a fear of letting people down, a worry that you'll be revealed as inadequate. A lot of these mental health stress and well-being measures show the strongest correlations with growth mindset in the countries where the measure of growth mindset does not predict achievement. So let's answer the puzzle. Well, in a lot of East Asian countries, students are already doing 40 hours of schoolwork a week outside of their regular school time. So if you have a growth mindset, you can't really do much more math homework and science homework.

Mills: It's amazing.

Yeager: But if you have a fixed mindset, you could definitely worry that you're failing your family and your community if you're not seeming smart. And so I think what it really invites us to do is to look for more puzzles like that internationally and say, "How do we go from the old world of saying, 'Is growth mindset real or not? Does it predict things or not?' into the new world of saying, 'Where does it not predict outcomes? How might it predict other outcomes, and what are the cultural factors at play?'" So I think the future is really going to be learning from those differences across cultures and that heterogeneity and the PISA result, which I encourage everyone to look at the report, is going to be a very fascinating launching point for that new research.

Mills: Well, this has been really interesting, Dr. Yeager, I appreciate your joining us today and talking to us about your research and wish you luck in your future endeavors.

Yeager: Thank you very much.

Mills: You can read more about Dr. Yeager's work in the April/May issue of APA's magazine Monitor on Psychology. Just go to www.apa.org/monitor. And you can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology at www.speakingofpsychology.org, or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org. That's speakingofpsychology, all one word, @apa.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan. Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.

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Can a growth mindset help students achieve their potential? With David Yeager, PhD

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David Yeager, PhD, discusses the science of growth mindset and how it could help close academic achievement gaps.

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National Call to Action for Summer Learning:  How Did School Districts Respond?

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National Call to Action for Summer Learning:  How Did School Districts Respond?

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Wallace Foundation

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Author(s) Allison Crean Davis, John Hitchcock, Beth-Ann Tek, Emily Diaz and Molly Hershey-Arista

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National Call to Action for Summer Learning: How Did School Districts Respond?

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Your source for research and ideas to expand high quality learning and enrichment opportunities. Supporting: School Leadership, After School, Summer and Extended Learning Time, Arts Education and Building Audiences for the Arts.

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Ambitious Growth Needed to Accelerate Learning Recovery

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Ambitious Growth Needed to Accelerate Learning Recovery

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Curriculum Associates

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As the nation's students continue to fall behind pre-pandemic learning benchmarks, Curriculum Associates has released a new report demonstrating the impact of setting ambitious targets for students and what can happen when they meet them.

Findings from Pathways to Success: How Stretch Growth Goals Support Learning Recovery are based on data from more than 2.4 million students who completed the i-Ready Diagnostic for Reading and more than three million students who completed the i-Ready Diagnostic for Mathematics in Grades K-7 in 2021-2022 and in Grades 1-8 in 2022-2023. The report evaluates trends in growth patterns and grade-level placements for students who may require the most support to get to grade-level or develop essential prerequisite skills for later grades.

"So much of the news we're seeing regarding student growth since the COVID-19 pandemic has showcased the historic lows in student learning," said Rob Waldron, CEO of Curriculum Associates. "While these findings are concerning, students are able to accelerate their learning and begin to catch up when high expectations and personalized supports-like Stretch Growth-are utilized by schools. It's not too late for us to help our students recover from learning loss and turn around the national narrative-but we cannot wait any longer."

Curriculum Associates has pioneered the concept of Stretch Growth to create individualized student learning targets intended to provide ambitious yet attainable pathways to grade-level proficiency that go beyond the typical learning trajectory.

"By implementing Stretch Growth goals and setting high expectations, we have found that students are able to close learning gaps, particularly in the earlier grades," said Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates. "We found more success in students reaching grade level and staying at grade level when learning gaps were addressed early on. However, that's not to say introducing Stretch Growth goals to older students won't yield results. Even the practice of working toward Stretch Growth goals, when not fully achieving them, can inspire students to be ambitious and motivated in their learning."
Key Findings:

For students who began Year 1 two or more grade levels below their chronological grade, there were at least three times the percentage reaching grade-level placement after two years of Stretch Growth compared to Typical Growth.

For Grade 2 students who began Year 1 two or more grade levels behind in Reading, we saw only 31 percent place on grade level at the end of Grade 3 after Typical Growth, and a full 25 percent of those students remained two or more grade levels behind. But for these same students, meeting Stretch Growth led to 89 percent achieving grade level.

For Grade 4 students who began two or more grade levels behind in Mathematics, a smaller percentage of students reached grade level at the end of Grade 5 when meeting Typical Growth targets (15%) compared to students who met Stretch Growth targets (75%).

Students who met Stretch Growth for even one year, rather than two years consecutively, still demonstrated higher proportions (1.5 times) of reaching grade level than those who only met Typical Growth.

Stretch Growth proved particularly impactful in elementary years (i.e., Grades K-5), with at least 70 percent of students reaching grade level in Mathematics after meeting their Stretch Growth targets for two years.

In Grades 6-8, though there was a smaller proportion of students reaching grade level in Mathematics after meeting their Stretch Growth targets for two years, compared to elementary students, we still see nearly 50 percent or more reach grade level.

Up to 22 percent of elementary school students reached grade-level placement after two years of Typical Growth in Mathematics.

After two years of Typical Growth, only a small percentage (i.e., six percent or less) of middle-grade mathematics students achieved grade-level placement.

"The time is ripe to implement meaningful, evidence-based, and scalable interventions to accelerate student learning," said Emily McCann, senior vice president of educator community at Curriculum Associates. "We have an opportunity to revolutionize long-term learning across the nation by embedding Stretch Growth and setting high expectations as a practice to address learning gaps. Supporting teachers with the right data-driven tools to create individualized learning pathways for all students is the key to accelerated student learning."

Pathways to Success: How Stretch Growth Goals Support Learning Recovery is one of a series of reports from Curriculum Associates on Stretch Growth impact and implementation. It precedes the forthcoming Curriculum Associates reports for Reading and Mathematics from the 2022-2023 school year.

About Curriculum Associates
Founded in 1969, Curriculum Associates, LLC designs research-based print and online instructional materials, screens and assessments, and data management tools. The company's products and outstanding customer service provide teachers and administrators with the resources necessary for teaching diverse student populations and fostering learning for all students.

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Ambitious Growth Needed to Accelerate Learning Recovery

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As the nation's students continue to fall behind pre-pandemic learning benchmarks, Curriculum Associates has released a new report demonstrating the impact of setting ambitious targets for students and what can happen when they meet them.

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edreports.org

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Impact Why Materials Matter Annual Report State of the Market

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Long-Term Trend Assessment Results:  Reading and Mathematics

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Long-Term Trend Assessment Results:  Reading and Mathematics

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NAEP

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Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) administered the NAEP long-term trend (LTT) reading and mathematics assessments to 13-year-old students from October to December of the 2022-23 school year. The average scores for 13-year-olds declined 4 points in reading and 9 points in mathematics compared to the previous assessment administered during the 2019-20 school year. Compared to a decade ago, the average scores declined 7 points in reading and 14 points in mathematics.

Figure Trend in NAEP long-term trend reading and mathematics average scores for 13-year-old students

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* Significantly different ( p < .05) from 2023.

NOTE: The NAEP long-term trend (LTT) assessment results are reported by the year in which the school year ends. For example, the age 13 assessment was administered during the fall of the 2022-23 school year and results are reported as 2023 LTT at age 13.

This Highlights report compares performance on the NAEP long-term trend reading and mathematics assessments for age 13 students during the 2022-23 school year to previous assessment results, with a focus on results obtained in the 2019-20 school year. Results reflect the performance of a nationally representative sample of 8,700 thirteen-year-olds in each subject. Performance comparisons are based on statistically significant differences between assessment years and between groups. Explore details about the long-term trend assessments and how they differ from main NAEP assessments.

I. Performance Trends by Percentiles

Reading scores decline at all selected percentiles since 2020

NAEP reports scores at five selected percentiles to show changes over time by lower- (10th and 25th percentiles), middle- (50th percentile), and higher- (75th and 90th percentiles) performing students. Percentiles are useful for understanding how overall score gains or losses are distributed across the student population and provide context for the national average score.

The 2023 reading scores for age 13 students at all five selected percentile levels declined compared to 2020. The declines ranged from 3 to 4 points for middle- and higher-performing students to 6 to 7 points for lower-performing students, though the score declines of lower performers were not significantly different from those of their middle- and higher-performing peers.

Larger declines since 2020 for lower-performing students in mathematics

The 2023 mathematics scores for age 13 students at all five selected percentile levels declined compared to 2020. The declines ranged from 6 to 8 points for middle- and higher-performing students to 12 to 14 points for lower-performing students, with larger declines for lower performers in comparison to their higher-performing peers.

II. Performance Trends by Student Group

Scores decline for many student groups in reading, and for nearly all student groups in mathematics

The 2023 average scores in reading declined compared to 2020 for many student groups reported by NAEP; for example, scores were lower for both male and female 13-year-olds, for students eligible and not eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), and for students attending schools in the Northeast and the Midwest regions. In mathematics, scores declined compared to 2020 for most student groups; for example, scores were lower for Black, Hispanic, and White 13-year-olds, for students attending schools in all regions of the country, for students eligible and not eligible for the NSLP, and for students at all reported levels of parental education.

See average score results for selected student groups through the drop-down menu selection below. Symbols in the figure indicate the score change between two sets of assessment years: from 2012 to 2020 and from 2020 to 2023. For example, in the figure below for race/ethnicity, the gray diamonds indicate that the 2020 reading score was not significantly different from the 2012 score for any racial/ethnic group with reportable results, and the down arrows indicate that 2023 reading scores declined for White and Black students and for students of Two or More Races in comparison to 2020.

In mathematics, the 11-point score decrease for female students compared to the 7-point decrease for male students resulted in a widening of the Male−Female score gap in comparison to 2020. Also, the 13-point score decrease among Black students compared to the 6-point decrease among White students resulted in a widening of the White−Black score gap from 35 points in 2020 to 42 points in 2023. In reading, there were no statistically significant changes in these score gaps in 2023 compared to 2020.

Figure Changes in NAEP long-term trend reading and mathematics average scores for 13-year-old students, by race/ethnicity: 2012, 2020, and 2023

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NAEP long-term trend performance levels for age 13

NOTE: Results are not shown for Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander students because reporting standards were not met. The NAEP long-term trend (LTT) assessment results are reported by the year in which the school year ends. For example, the age 13 assessment was administered during the fall of the 2022-23 school year and results are reported as 2023 LTT at age 13.

III. Student Learning Experience

Students who took the long-term trend assessments in reading and mathematics during the 2022-23 school year also responded to a survey questionnaire. Students taking the long-term trend reading assessment were asked how often they read for fun on their own time; students taking the long-term trend mathematics assessment were asked which type of mathematics course they were currently taking; and all students were asked about the number of days they had been absent from school in the previous month.

Students' responses to survey questions provide information with which to compare performance based on their self-reported characteristics and educational experiences. This information may be valuable in helping parents, educators, and policymakers understand what aspects of students' experiences are related to achievement. Survey questionnaire results, however, do not establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the characteristic or experience and student achievement. NAEP is not designed to identify the causes of performance differences. Numerous factors interact to influence student achievement, including local educational policies and practices, the quality of teachers, and available resources. Such factors may change over time and vary among student groups.

Percentage of students missing 5 or more days of school monthly has doubled since 2020

Students who took the 2023 long-term trend reading and mathematics assessments were asked how many days of school they had missed in the last month. Responses to the survey question for both subjects indicate a decrease in the percentages of 13-year-old students reporting having missed none to 2 days in the past month compared to 2020. Conversely, there were increases in the percentages of 13-year-old students who reported missing 3 or 4 days and students who reported missing 5 or more days in the last month. The percentage of students who reported missing 5 or more days doubled from 5 percent in 2020 to 10 percent in 2023.

For both reading and mathematics, students with fewer missed school days generally had higher average scores in 2023 than students with more missed school days.

Figure Percentage of 13-year-old students in NAEP long-term trend reading, by number of days student absent from school in a month: 2020 and 2023

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Fourteen percent of students report reading for fun almost every day,lower than previous years

In 2023, fourteen percent of students reported reading for fun almost every day. This percentage was 3 percentage points lower than 2020, and 13 percentage points lower than 2012. Overall, the percentage of 13-year-old students who reported reading for fun almost every day was lower in 2023 than in all previous assessment years.

The average reading score in 2023 for those students who reported reading for fun on their own almost every day was 275, which was higher than the scores for students who reported other levels of frequency for reading on their own time. See a data table with average score results.

Compared to their lower-performing peers, larger percentage of higher-performing students report more frequently reading for fun

Fifty-one percent of 13-year-old students scoring at or above the 75th percentile in 2023 reported that they read for fun on their own time at least once a week, whereas 28 percent of 13-year-old students scoring below the 25th percentile reported doing so. The percentage of students who reported reading for fun on their own time once or twice a month was also larger for students at or above the 75th percentile. Conversely, the percentages of students who reported reading less frequently- a few times a year or never or hardly ever- were larger for students performing below the 25th percentile.

Figure Percentage of 13-year-old students in NAEP long-term trend reading, by selected percentiles and by how often they read for fun on their own time: 2023

How often do you read for fun on your own time?

Proportion of lower-performing students (below 25th percentile)

Proportion of higher-performing students (at or above 75th percentile)

* Significantly different ( p < .05) from students performing at or above the 75th percentile.

NOTE: The NAEP long-term trend (LTT) assessment results are reported by the year in which the school year ends. For example, the age 13 assessment was administered during the fall of the 2022-23 school year and results are reported as 2023 LTT at age 13.

Smaller percentage of students report taking algebra compared to a decade ago, but no change from 2020

Students were asked, "What kind of mathematics are you taking this year?" and were given five response options: I am not taking mathematics this year; regular mathematics; pre-algebra; algebra; and other. Compared to 2020, there were no significant changes in the percentages of students by type of mathematics taken during the 2022-23 school year.

Compared to 2012, however, the percentage of 13-year-old students in 2023 who reported they were taking regular mathematics increased from 28 to 42 percent, while the percentage of students taking pre-algebra decreased from 29 to 22 percent, and the percentage of students taking algebra dropped from 34 to 24 percent.

Average scores were lower in 2023 for all types of mathematics courses presented compared to 2020. See a data table with average score results.

Compared to their lower-performing peers, larger percentage of higher-performing 13-year-old students report taking algebra

Forty-four percent of 13-year-old students scoring at or above the 75th percentile in 2023 reported that they were taking algebra during the 2022-23 school year, whereas 10 percent of students scoring below the 25th percentile reported doing so. There was no significant difference between the percentages of lower- and higher-performing 13-year-old students who reported currently taking pre-algebra. The percentage of students who reported taking regular mathematics was higher for students performing below the 25th percentile: Fifty-two percent of lower performers reported taking regular mathematics compared to 23 percent of higher-performing students who reported doing so.

Figure Percentage of 13-year-old students in NAEP long-term trend mathematics, by selected percentiles and by type of mathematics taken during the school year: 2023

What kind of mathematics are you taking this year?

Proportion of lower-performing students (below 25th percentile)

Proportion of higher-performing students (at or above 75th percentile)

Not taking mathematics

#

# Rounds to zero.

* Significantly different ( p < .05) from students performing at or above the 75th percentile.

NOTE: The NAEP long-term trend (LTT) assessment results are reported by the year in which the school year ends. For example, the age 13 assessment was administered during the fall of the 2022-23 school year and results are reported as 2023 LTT at age 13.

IV. Explore More Long-Term Trend Data

Generate custom tables for age 13 students in NAEP long-term trend reading and mathematics across all assessment years.

V. More About the Age 13 Assessment Content and Sample

Since the 1970s, the NAEP long-term trend assessments have been administered to monitor the academic performance of students across three age levels (9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students). This report mainly focuses on the comparison of age 13 students (typically in grade 8) between 2020 and 2023. A report card summarizing results for 9- and 13-year-old students across all administrations back to the 1970s is forthcoming.

There are several differences between long-term trend and main NAEP assessments in reading and mathematics.

LTT reading was first administered in 1971 and LTT mathematics was first administered in 1973. Main NAEP assessments in reading and mathematics date back to the 1990s; frameworks for these assessments are periodically revised to reflect curricular changes.

LTT assessments in reading and mathematics are administered to students sampled by age, while main NAEP assessments are administered to students sampled by grade.

LTT assessments in reading and mathematics are less frequently updated than main NAEP assessments in these subjects and are less reflective of changes in curriculum.

LTT assessments are paper-based, while main NAEP assessments are digitally-based.

The instruments and methodologies of LTT and main NAEP assessment programs are different; therefore, direct comparisons between the LTT results presented in this report and the assessment results presented in other main NAEP reports are not possible. Read more about the differences between long-term trend and main NAEP assessments.

Although the LTT assessments are typically administered every four years, NCES decided to administer the long-term trend assessments to provide data on post-pandemic student performance. The assessments at age 13 were administered from October to December of the 2022-23 school year. Results are based on a nationally representative sample of approximately 8,700 students in each subject. Of the 460 schools that participated in 2023, eighty-two percent had participated in 2020. The LTT data collection at age 13 complements the data previously collected and reported for age 9.

The long-term trend (LTT) assessment in reading requires age 13 students to read a variety of short texts (expository pieces, poems, riddles, advertisements, and story excerpts) and to respond to questions about what they read. Students participating in the 2023 LTT reading assessment read passages and responded to questions in three 15-minute sections. Each section contained three or four short passages and approximately 10 questions. The majority of questions were presented in a multiple-choice format, though most sections included one constructed-response question.

Assessment questions are designed to measure reading comprehension skills, primarily to

locate specific information in the text provided;

make inferences based on information in two or more parts of the text; and

identify the main idea in the text.

The LTT assessment in mathematics requires age 13 students to respond to a variety of questions designed to measure

knowledge of basic mathematical facts;

ability to carry out computations using paper and pencil;

knowledge of basic measurement formulas, as they are applied in geometric settings; and

ability to apply mathematics to daily living skills, such as those involving time and money.

Students participating in the LTT mathematics assessment responded to questions in three 15-minute sections. Most sections contained between 22 and 26 questions. The majority of questions students answered were presented in a multiple-choice format, but some constructed-response questions were included in each of the sections.

NOTE: The NAEP long-term trend (LTT) reading and mathematics scales range from 0 to 500. Because the scales were developed separately for each subject, comparisons cannot be made from one subject to another. Black includes African American. Hispanic includes Latino. Race categories exclude Hispanic origin. The information about National School Lunch Program (NSLP) variable is based on available school records. If school records were not available, the student was classified as "Information not available." The category "students with disabilities" includes students identified as having either an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or protection under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The results for students with disabilities and English learners are based on students who were assessed and cannot be generalized to the total population of such students. See more information about student group variables. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding or the omission of categories. Although the estimates (e.g., average scores or percentages) are shown as rounded numbers in the charts, the positions of the data points in the graphics are based on the unrounded numbers. Unrounded numbers were used for calculating the differences between the estimates, and for the statistical comparison test when the estimates were compared to each other. Not all apparent differences between estimates are statistically significant. NAEP reports results using widely accepted statistical standards; findings are reported based on a statistical significance level set at .05, with appropriate adjustments for multiple comparisons. Only those differences that are found to be statistically significant are referred to as "higher" or "lower."

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), various years, 1971-2023 Long-Term Trend (LTT) Reading and Mathematics Assessments.

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NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment Results: Reading and Mathematics

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2023 NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment - Results Highlights at Age 13

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National Center for Educational Statistics NCES

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National Center for Educational Statistics NCES

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National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a part of the U.S. Department of Education

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The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) collects, analyzes and makes available data related to education in the U.S. and other nations.

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Transforming K-12 Education for the Better

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Transforming K-12 Education for the Better

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mckinsey.com

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K-12 schools have dealt with many challenges over the past few years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic put many existing problems into much sharper focus. Even so, there are many bright spots to point to as children head back into the classroom this fall. Some districts are rolling out new mental health interventions to support their students' needs and others are seeing accelerated rates of learning recovery after adopting new instructional materials, according to McKinsey senior partner Jimmy Sarakatsannis, partner Jake Bryant, and colleagues. Read the full report to see how these combined interventions can create better learning experiences for all, and explore the rest of our recent education insights about how schools can transform for the better.

What it would take for US schools to fully recover from COVID-19

Author Talks: How educators can avoid burnout and embrace self-care

K-12 teachers are quitting. What would make them stay?

Advancing racial equity in US pre-K-12 education

Expanding publicly funded pre-K: How to do it and do it well

Lessons in leadership: Transforming struggling US K-12 schools

Author Talks: To nurture true potential, reimagine intelligence

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Transforming K-12 education for the better

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K-12 schools have dealt with many challenges over the past few years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic put many existing problems into much sharper focus.

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What Would It take for Schools to Fully Recover?

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What Would It take for Schools to Fully Recover?

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mckinsey.com

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Most K-12 students in the United States have returned to the classroom and to a semblance of a normal learning environment. Yet they continue to battle challenges related to the pandemic. Our analysis shows that nationwide, an estimated 17 million students have more than half a year of pandemic-related learning delay, 16 million students who need mental-health support are not receiving it, and 15 million students are chronically absent. These challenges are interconnected and mutually reinforcing: students who are not in a mental state conducive to learning or are simply not present in school cannot participate in learning recovery interventions. Therefore, the three challenges should likely be tackled together-and soon.

At the same time, districts are under extraordinary pressure-pressure to deliver results for students, many of whom have missed significant learning milestones, and pressure to do so with limited (and potentially diminishing) funds, with the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) funding window closing by September 2024. As districts look hard at their budgets, they need to understand how to prioritize investments in proven interventions to address the interconnected challenges students are facing.

Below, we outline these three challenges, examples of bright spots for each, and what it might take for states, districts, and philanthropies to scale interventions to reach a greater proportion of students in need (see sidebar, "Looking beyond ESSER to fund interventions").

Prevailing student challenges and bright spots

Learning delays, diminished mental health, and absenteeism present real challenges for today's students. Schools have an opportunity to address them by applying lessons learned from existing bright spots.

Learning delays

The bright spots. Several states and districts have seen accelerated rates of learning recovery after adopting high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) and aligned professional development; providing high-quality, high-intensity tutoring; and extending the school year through summer or intensive-learning academies.

Mental health

The bright spots. Interventions in student mental health exist along a continuum, ranging from preventive supports offered to all students (tier one) to acute interventions offered to the subset of students in greatest need (tier three). Bright spots have emerged across this continuum.

Absenteeism

The bright spots. While many factors that contribute to absenteeism may be outside schools' control and results from efforts to curb absenteeism are still emerging, a few practices are showing promise for reengaging students.

What it might take to scale

Here we focus on scaling bright-spot interventions in learning delay, given that this area currently has the broadest evidence base for the costs and effects of tested solutions. More research is needed to understand the investments necessary to scale mental-health and absenteeism interventions and to understand how to design comprehensive interventions that account for the interactions among learning, absenteeism, and mental health.

Theoretically, absent time and human capital constraints, dedicating the full remaining ESSER funding toward high-quality, high-intensity tutoring could address pandemic-related learning delays for every student with more than nine weeks (a quarter of a year) of learning delay in 42 out of 50 states. However, the reality is that districts are unlikely to be able to hire enough tutors, schedule enough sessions, and administer programs on that scale-and do so within the remaining months of ESSER.

Addressing pandemic-related learning delays in the real world and for as many students as possible will require layering interventions.

Addressing pandemic-related learning delays in the real world and for as many students as possible will require layering interventions-HQIM, high-intensity tutoring, and summer learning. We consider three potential scenarios for layering interventions.

Scenario 1: Every district in the United States scales existing bright-spot interventions

Scenario 2: Scale faster than existing bright-spot interventions

Closing the remaining gap within the ESSER budget envelope and timeline would be possible only if districts could roll out more-effective programs at a faster rate than we have seen to date. For example, districts could address the full extent of pandemic-related learning delays if they doubled the effectiveness of existing summer learning (toward what was experienced in highly effective prepandemic vacation acceleration academies) and found the capacity to tutor an additional 13.6 million students. However, given existing district capacity constraints and the tight time frame, this goal would be very challenging to achieve.

Scenario 3: Embed solutions on an ongoing basis

A more realistic and sustainable approach may be to embed practices into future budgets. Extending the recovery period from one year to two, providing an additional year of HQIM and aligned professional development for teachers, could address 83 percent of students with pandemic-related learning delays (Exhibit 3).

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What it would take for US schools to fully recover from COVID-19

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Learning delays, diminished mental health, absenteeism: US K-12 students face significant challenges in the wake of the pandemic. Schools must prioritize investments to best meet their needs.

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McKinsey partners with leaders on strategy, innovating to net zero, leading with tech, and building capabilities for a sustainable, inclusive, growing future.

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New Report from Curriculum Associates Indicates Ambitious Growth Needed and Attainable to Accelerate Learning Recovery

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New Report from Curriculum Associates Indicates Ambitious Growth Needed and Attainable to Accelerate Learning Recovery

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NORTH BILLERICA, Mass. , /PRNewswire/ -- As the nation's students continue to fall behind pre-pandemic learning benchmarks, Curriculum Associates has released a new report demonstrating the impact of setting ambitious targets for students and what can happen when they meet them.

Findings from Pathways to Success: How Stretch Growth Goals Support Learning Recovery are based on data from more than 2.4 million students who completed the i-Ready® Diagnostic for Reading and more than three million students who completed the i-Ready Diagnostic for Mathematics in Grades K-7 in 2021-2022 and in Grades 1-8 in 2022-2023. The report evaluates trends in growth patterns and grade-level placements for students who may require the most support to get to grade level or develop essential prerequisite skills for later grades.

"So much of the news we're seeing regarding student growth since the COVID-19 pandemic has showcased the historic lows in student learning," said Rob Waldron, CEO of Curriculum Associates. "While these findings are concerning, students are able to accelerate their learning and begin to catch up when high expectations and personalized supports-like Stretch Growth-are utilized by schools. It's not too late for us to help our students recover from learning loss and turn around the national narrative-but we cannot wait any longer."

Curriculum Associates has pioneered the concept of Stretch Growth to create individualized student learning targets intended to provide ambitious yet attainable pathways to grade-level proficiency that go beyond the typical learning trajectory.

"By implementing Stretch Growth goals and setting high expectations, we have found that students are able to close learning gaps, particularly in the earlier grades," said Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates. "We found more success in students reaching grade level and staying at grade level when learning gaps were addressed early on. However, that's not to say introducing Stretch Growth goals to older students won't yield results. Even the practice of working toward Stretch Growth goals, when not fully achieving them, can inspire students to be ambitious and motivated in their learning."
Key Findings:

For students who began year 1 two or more grades below their chronological grade, there were at least three times the percentage reaching grade level placement after two years of Stretch Growth compared to Typical Growth.

For Grade 2 students who began year 1 two or more grade levels behind in reading, only 31 percent place on grade level at the end of Grade 3 after Typical Growth, and a full 25 percent of those students remained two or more grade levels behind. But for these same students, meeting Stretch Growth led to 89 percent achieving grade level.

For Grade 4 students who began two or more grade levels behind in math, a smaller percentage of students reached grade level at the end of Grade 5 when meeting Typical Growth targets (15 percent) compared to students who met Stretch Growth targets (75 percent).

Students who met Stretch Growth for even one year, rather than two years consecutively, still demonstrated higher proportions (1.5x) of reaching grade level than those who only met Typical Growth.

Stretch Growth proved particularly impactful in elementary years (i.e., Grades K-5), with at least 70 percent of students reaching grade level in mathematics after meeting their Stretch Growth targets for two years.

In Grades 6-8, though there was a smaller proportion of students reaching grade level in mathematics after meeting their Stretch Growth targets for two years, compared to elementary students, nearly 50 percent or more reach grade level.

Up to 22 percent of elementary school students reached grade-level placement after two years of Typical Growth in Mathematics.

After two years of Typical Growth, only a small percentage (i.e., six percent or less) of middle-grade mathematics students achieved grade-level placement.

"The time is ripe to implement meaningful, evidence-based, and scalable interventions to accelerate student learning," said Emily McCann, senior vice president of educator community at Curriculum Associates. "We have an opportunity to revolutionize long-term learning across the nation by embedding Stretch Growth and setting high expectations as a practice to address learning gaps. Supporting teachers with the right data-driven tools to create individualized learning pathways for all students is the key to accelerated student learning."

Pathways to Success: How Stretch Growth Goals Support Learning Recovery is one of a series of reports from Curriculum Associates on Stretch Growth impact and implementation. It precedes the forthcoming Curriculum Associates reports for reading and mathematics from the 2022-2023 school year.

About Curriculum Associates
Founded in 1969, Curriculum Associates, LLC designs research-based print and online instructional materials, screens and assessments, and data management tools. The company's products and outstanding customer service provide teachers and administrators with the resources necessary for teaching diverse student populations and fostering learning for all students.

SOURCE Curriculum Associates, LLC

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New Report from Curriculum Associates Indicates Ambitious Growth Needed and Attainable to Accelerate Learning Recovery

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PRNewswire/ -- As the nation's students continue to fall behind pre-pandemic learning benchmarks, Curriculum Associates has released a new report...

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Annual Report on the State of Student Learning in 2023

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Annual Report on the State of Student Learning in 2023

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Curriculum Associates

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Overall, there are few signs of recovery from pandemic-related school disruptions. There has been little movement in reading or math achievement levels from spring 2022 to spring 2023, with the exception of early-elementary reading (i.e., Grades 1-2), particularly in the Phonics domain.

Students Placing On Grade Level in Mathematics in Grades 1-8

Students Placing On Grade Level in Reading in Grades 1-8
Key Findings:

Grades 1 and 2 students were not yet in school when the pandemic shut down schools in March 2020, yet they are still performing below pre-pandemic averages.

In spring 2023, 61 percent of Grade 1 students and 60 percent of Grade 2 students placed on grade level in reading on the i-Ready Diagnostic. While these results are slightly above achievement levels in spring 2022, they are seven percentage points below achievement levels in spring 2019.

Overall, early-elementary students show a small increase in grade-level attainment in reading between spring 2022 and spring 2023, yet they remain below pre-pandemic achievement levels.

Upper-elementary and middle school achievement levels in reading have remained stagnant. In Grades 5-8, fewer than 50 percent of students are reading on grade level, comparable with pre-pandemic levels.

In 2023, 50 percent of Grade 4 students placed On Grade Level in reading, a three-percentage-point drop from 2019. This is notable because Grade 4 students were in Grade 1 when schools initially closed-a crucial year for the development of foundational reading skills.

In mathematics, fewer students are on grade level and more students are below grade level across all grades compared to pre-pandemic levels.

In Grades 5-8, the percentage of students on grade level is between four and 10 percentage points lower than in 2019.

Across all grades, student learning from 2021-2022 to 2022-2023 remained stagnant.

Historical inequities continue to persist between schools serving majority Black and Latino students and schools serving majority White students, as well as between schools in low-income communities and schools in higher-income communities.

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Annual Report: The State of Student Learning in 2023

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This research analyzes reading and mathematics data gathered from nearly two million students and provides new insights on student learning trends in 2023.

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Personalize Learning. Accelerate Growth.

i-Ready programs support every learner on their path toward grade-level success. By connecting to actionable, intuitive data, teachers know where to focus and students become more capable and engaged.

Exciting news! Curriculum Associates Welcomes SoapBox Labs to the CA Family.

Curriculum Associates announces the acquisition of SoapBox Labs, a global leader in voice AI, powering equity-driven learning experiences for students.
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We partner with educators to make classrooms better places for teachers and students.

That is the mission that has driven us for more than 50 years. We believe that all students can excel and that educators play the pivotal role in that. i‑Ready combines best-in-class instruction and assessment, supports measurable growth, and enables equitable learning opportunities.

Rich data empowers teachers with a deeper knowledge of their students so they can take meaningful instructional next steps.

Instructional resources support educators, engage classrooms, and enable all students to access grade-level learning and beyond.

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My students have been showing a steady incline of growth using i-Ready. From the beginning of the year, the majority of my fourth grade students tested at least two grade levels behind. While using i-Ready lessons on their pathway during reading and math, I have been able to see an increase in both subjects during instruction. Students are expanding their vocabulary, becoming more confident in their math skills, and increasing their fluency.

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Creators of i-Ready | Curriculum Associates

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i-Ready makes classrooms better places for teachers and students. Learn more about our world-class assessment and instruction programs and our customer-acclaimed service.

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NEWA

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See their needs. Close the gaps. Help them grow.

Better insights, better decisions, better outcomes

MAP Growth, part of the Growth Activation Solution from NWEA, is the most trusted and innovative assessment for measuring achievement and growth in K-12 math, reading, language usage, and science. It provides teachers with accurate, actionable evidence to help inform instructional strategies regardless of how far students are above or below grade level. It also connects to the largest set of instructional content providers, giving educators flexibility in curriculum choices.

Useful reports for data-informed decisions

Easy-to-use, standards-aligned reports put the information teachers need at their fingertips. Reliable insights make it simple for teachers to find common areas of need among their students, identify students who could benefit from intervention, and determine which instructional strategies are generating the most academic growth. Higher-level reports provide administrators with the context to drive improvement across entire schools and educational systems.

When students are counting on you, count on MAP Growth

Using MAP Growth as part of a comprehensive and balanced assessment plan, teachers can confidently tailor instruction to challenge every student, whether they are below, at, or above grade level. MAP Growth student reports also present realistic learning goals by subject areas so that, through a teacher's guidance, students can individually see their progress and be inspired to take charge of their own learning.

MAP Growth: The center of the Growth Activation Solution

The Growth Activation Solution pairs MAP Growth with guided implementation and professional learning experiences that engage and galvanize your team while honing assessment literacy and instructional planning. Wrap-around support and expert-led guidance round out this solution, providing your teachers and coaches with the resources and tools they need to improve student outcomes.

Discover the MAP Growth difference

Through intuitive design, unrivaled innovation, and a focus on accessibility, MAP Growth helps you understand the needs of more students than ever before.

Incredible coverage

Available in more grades and subjects than any other interim assessment, including science and high school-level, course-specific math

MAP en español

Spanish options to assess math and reading in students' home language

Right length and no longer

A powerful assessment right-sized to pinpoint where your students are in their learning, in only as many questions as necessary

Using our MAP [Growth] data, the learning continuum, and formative assessment practices, our students are experiencing great growth, closing the achievement gap!

Dr. Lori Stollar
Director of Curriculum & Innovation, Littlestown Area School District, PA

Explore connected teaching and learning

MAP Growth scores can now place students in personalized adaptive practice or intensive intervention.

Foster growth with connected curriculum

MAP® Accelerator™, co-developed by NWEA and Khan Academy, translates MAP Growth results to personalized learning pathways with standards-aligned math content to meet each student where they are.

Foster growth with connected curriculum

Maximize the tools you're already using. MAP Growth data connects with the most instructional partners of any assessment to ensure engaging, standards-aligned content that supports diverse student populations.

In a class of our own

Ready to close the gaps and make gains?

Helping educators see student needs and close learning gaps

Explore grades, subjects, languages and accommodations supported in MAP Growth.

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