From ACX, What Happened to NAEP Scores?
Everyone want their theory about what happened to education during Covid to prove out. (What am I saying? Have I gone mad? Everyone has already decided their theory about education has proven out whatever the data is. Post hoc rationalisation is very powerful.) Covid certainly didn't help, but it looks like a decline with the same slope was already in play. The states that had schools open more vs those which stayed closed do not show clear trends. Exceptions abound. There is discrepancy between what happened with the best student and the worst. Except where there isn't any difference. Alexander notes that the 2026 scores will be of 4th graders who did not miss any covid closing time at all, so it will be interesting what their numbers are.
Anyway, there are lots of graphs, and many of you like those.
1 comment:
I don't think he should feel bad, as he says that he does. We all did the best we could with a whole set of unknowns. We didn't know how lethal, we didn't know how virulent, we didn't know how effective lockdowns would be in protecting the vulnerable and reducing the spread.
You often warn against doing things that 'just make sense,' but in cases like this what else is one to do? He reviews his arguments, decide they still make sense, and then tries to figure out what went wrong. What more remedy can one do, since it is not possible to empirically observe the counterfactual cases?
FWIW, I agree with him that the 'schools dropped standards and never raised them again' is the most plausible answer. That seems to make sense of at least some of the data, too, although again we can only observe the factual, and not compare with the counterfactuals that would have arisen if we'd done things differently.
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