This series of reports compares performance in reading and math assessments for the same set of students over time. The main metric used in the reports is the National Percentile Rank (NPR). NPR is a norm-referenced measure that compares student performance to a national sample of students.

Key findings from the first report (published January 2021) include:

• On average, decline in student National Percentile Rank (NPR) performance from 2019-20 Winter (in-person instruction) to 2020-21 Fall (virtual instruction) was small. The overall average decline was highest (6 percentiles) for aimswebPlus Reading (grades 1-5).
• Students who were in kindergarten in 2019-20 and in first grade in 2020-21 had the largest decline in Winter to next-Fall performance.
• Overall, the decline in performance from Winter to next-Fall represents a mostly equal decline across students of different demographic subgroups.
• Although all demographic groups experienced Winter to next-Fall declines equally, year-to-year comparisons show that existing overall performance differences across demographic groups persisted.

In April 2021, we published the first addendum in which we extended the analyses of the January report by looking at the performance of the same set of 2019-20 Winter test takers and analyzing their 2020-21 Winter reading and math performance. The main metric used in this addendum, as in the report, is the National Percentile Rank (NPR). Key findings include:

• On average, decline in student National Percentile Rank (NPR) performance from 2019-20 Winter (in-person instruction) to 2020-21 Winter (virtual instruction) was highest (9 percentiles) for aimswebPlus Reading (grades 1-5).
• Students in our sample in grades 1-3 and 5 experienced further decline from 2020-21 Fall when looking at 2020-21 Winter performance; fourth-grade students performed marginally better in 2020-21 Winter than they did in 2020-21 Fall.
• Students who were in kindergarten in 2019-20 and in first grade in 2020-21 had the largest decline in Winter-to-Winter (full year) performance, a larger decline compared to their Winter-to-next-Fall performance.
• Similar to the findings of the January 2021 report, year-to-year comparisons show that existing overall performance differences across demographic groups persisted despite the fact that all demographic groups experienced Winter-to-Winter declines almost equally.

In September 2021, we concluded the series of cohort studies that compared aimswebPlus Reading, Star Reading, and Star Math performance of 2019-2020 Winter test takers to their performance in each assessment window of 2020-2021 school year by publishing two reports.  We repeated the same analysis as in the January 2021 report and the April 2021 addendum separately for aimswebPlus and Star. In addition to the 2019-20 Winter to 2020-21 Spring comparison, each report examines the trends in average National Percentile Rank (NPR), the metric used throughout the series, throughout the assessment windows of the 2020-2021 school year.

Key findings for the September 2021 addendum on aimswebPlus Reading performance include:

• The overall Winter-to-next-Fall decline in aimswebPlus Reading performance which continued in the Winter testing window did not continue in Spring.
• Some grade levels, notably 2020-21 first-graders (2019-20 kindergarteners) who experienced the largest Winter-to-next-Fall decline, showed improvements in average NPR performance in 2020-21 Spring.
• In the 2020-21 Spring testing window, as in the year-long trends, the way different demographic groups’ performance changed over time did not show inter-group differences. However, the pre-existing performance differentials persisted.

Key findings for the September 2021 report on Star Reading and Math performance include:

• On average, student performance during the last testing window during the virtual/hybrid period (2020-21 Spring) was similar to student performance during the last in-person/at-school administration of Star Reading and Star Math in 2019-20 Winter.
• As the previous analyses in this cohort study series showed, performance of different demographic groups did not show large fluctuations throughout the year; however, performance differences between these groups persisted