Study of Changes in Public School Composition During the Pandemic and Their Relationship With NAEP Performance

This study was motivated by the desire to better understand the major decline in eighth-grade mathematics achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) from 2019 to 2022. Given sharp losses in the enrollment of public school students during the same period, the study has two main purposes: (a) to examine changes in the demographic composition of students among eighth graders in U.S. public schools between 2019 and 2022 and (b) to estimate the extent to which the compositional changes relate to NAEP eighth-grade mathematics achievement scores in the same time period.

Overall, the study found that compositional changes between 2019 and 2022 generally correspond to trends in compositional changes observed before 2019. The changes in student and school characteristics between 2019 and 2022 are similar to observed trends in compositional changes in the years leading up to 2019. In addition, a relatively small proportion of the national decrease in eighth-grade mathematics achievement is associated with compositional changes, while the degree to which decreases are associated with compositional changes is more pronounced in certain states and districts.