Millions of Students Are (Still) Above Grade Level: Achievement and Achievement Variability in Mathematics and Reading Before and During COVID-19 in the United States

Abstract

According to a 2017 article by Peters and colleagues, millions of students have already demonstrated they know the material slated to be taught that year. Consequently, grade-level standards are unlikely to be appropriately challenging for these students. In this paper, we conceptually replicated and extended this prior study. Using data from schools that administered the Renaissance Star assessment in Fall 2018 and Fall 2021, we quantified pre-COVID and mid-COVID average achievement and variance in achievement in mathematics and reading in fifth grade and estimated the grade level of instruction needed for students. Our results indicate that (a) achievement dropped during COVID-19 relative to pre-COVID, but the drop in mathematics was larger, and (b) achievement variability increased during COVID-19, but the variability in reading was slightly more pronounced. Further, our results replicated Peters et al.’s (2017) results showing that large numbers of students still performed above grade level, and substantial variability in achievement was present within schools.