A Working Paper From EPIC

The Path of Student Learning Delay During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Michigan

May 2023

This paper uses student achievement measures from the Michigan’s summative end-of-year tests (the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, M-STEP) and formative fall and spring NWEA MAP Growth and Curriculum Associates i-Ready benchmark assessments to assess achievement growth and trajectories during the pandemic. A particularly useful benefit of combining these two data sources is that we are able to examine both the total impact of the pandemic through spring 2022 as well as how achievement progressed during the pandemic-affected school years. We also examine heterogeneity in performance across students with different demographic characteristics and those who participated in different modes of instruction (e.g., fully in-person, fully remote, or hybrid instruction). This paper answers three main questions:

1. How did the pandemic affect student achievement in Michigan?;
2. How did these achievement trends change throughout the pandemic?; and
3. Did achievement vary by race/ethnicity, economic disadvantage, and/or instructional modality?