Black Schools Recovering Fast Post-Pandemic, But Challenges Persist
A new study reveals a complicated truth: schools serving mostly Black students show the biggest academic gains since the pandemic, yet they are also the least recovered.
Predominantly Black schools experienced the most significant academic setbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, they are also bouncing back the fastest. However, despite this progress, Black students are still falling behind. A new study, which analyzed standardized test scores from over 9,300 schools five years after the pandemic began, highlights this complex reality.
Schools with a majority of Black students have made the largest academic improvements of any group since 2020. At the same time, they are the least likely to have fully recovered. The reason is simple math: a greater initial decline means there is more ground to make up to reach academic proficiency.
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“Those steeper declines mean that they had a bigger well to dig themselves out of after COVID,” explains Dr. Emily Morton. She is the lead research scientist at the nonprofit Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) and a co-author of the study.
A report from NWEA, released Tuesday, details how Morton and her team used standardized test scores to track learning recovery. The researchers compared test scores from fall 2019 to those from fall 2024. They defined a school as “recovered” if its achievement level matched or surpassed its pre-pandemic average.
The national picture is grim. Only about one in three schools has recovered in either math or reading. Just one in seven schools has bounced back in both subjects.
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