A RESEARCH REPORT FROM EPIC

K-8 Student Achievement and Achievement Gaps on Michigan’s 2020-21 Benchmark and Summative Assessments

December 2021

The purpose of this second report is to assess how progress toward learning goals during the 2020-21 school year differed across student groups and district types.

To expand on the analyses in our first report and gain a deeper understanding of assessment outcomes for Michigan students in 2020-21, we explore each of the following research questions:

• How did performance on fall and spring benchmark assessments differ across subgroups of students with different demographic and academic characteristics?
• How did assessment performance differ across districts that offered fully inperson, hybrid, or remote instruction all year, as well as those that offered different modalities in the fall than in the spring?
•  Did pre-existing achievement gaps between subgroups of students worsen over the course of the school year? Did new achievement gaps emerge?
• How did students’ trajectories toward grade-level proficiency on the M-STEP assessment compare to the trajectories of similar students before the pandemic?