Post-COVID Scores Tumble In NC

By John Hood

RALEIGH — In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, student performance fell across much of the United States. According to a new study of 2022 math and reading scores, however, North Carolina students suffered one of the country’s biggest tumbles.

For describing cross-state differences in educational outcomes, I’ve long relied on the Urban Institute’s analysis of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Few yardsticks are as consistent as NAEP’s reading and math exams, administered every couple of years to a representative sample of students in each jurisdiction. Urban Institute researchers then take these test scores and adjust them for demographics, making possible valid comparisons across states that differ markedly in the share of disadvantaged students.

Before COVID, our state fared well the Urban Institute analysis. Averaging results from the four tests included in the model — reading and math exams in the fourth and eighth grades — North Carolina ranked 7th in the country in 2019, behind (in order) Massachusetts, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, Mississippi, and Georgia. Rounding out the top 10 were Texas, Connecticut, and Maryland.

In 2022, the top 10 states in demographics-adjusted student performance were, again in order, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Nevada, and South Carolina. Alas, our state was no longer among them. North Carolina tumbled to 29th. Among previously high-performing states, only Maryland suffered a bigger drop than we did.

Now, I know readers may be tempted to slap this bad news on the back of their favorite hobbyhorses and ride them with reckless abandon. See, critics of the state legislature will insist, it was foolish to prioritize tax cuts and opportunity scholarships over more-dramatic increases in teacher pay and school funding! See, critics of former Gov. Roy Cooper will say, it was foolish for North Carolina to keep its schools closed so long despite the lack of strong evidence schools were a major vector of deadly disease!

Might I suggest less rocking and more talking? You can’t answer complex policy questions with simple comparisons or correlations. Many factors shape academic achievement. Only some of them can be found in the schoolhouse, and even then the effects on student performance are rarely as dramatic as the political rhetoric associated with them.

I happen to think Cooper did bungle the school-closure issue, and that this probably helps to explain why North Carolina’s test scores dropped so much. My opinion is based on research that holds other factors constant while comparing the length of closures to subsequent student performance. But I acknowledge not all studies show large effects. I’d like to see more evidence before drawing a final conclusion on the magnitude of the harm.

Moreover, other states that kept schools closed even longer than North Carolina did fared better on the 2022 NAEP tests, both in score averages and in changes from 2019. It’s possible that other policy choices by states help to explain variations in student performance. It’s also possible that NAEP tests administered in 2024 will show a different trajectory.

In the meantime, what the Urban Institute study can do is dispel certain myths that continue to pervade North Carolina’s debates on education policy.

First, no more making fun of the likes of South Carolina and Mississippi. Over the past decade, both have enacted major education reforms that changed how teachers were trained and students were taught. Their students haven’t just outperformed ours. They’ve outperformed their counterparts in such places as Connecticut, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.

Second, no more asserting that low-tax states such as Florida and Texas must inevitably sacrifice the quality of public services on the altar of fiscal conservatism. Their schools ranked well not just in the latest study but in past evaluations of NAEP data. Meanwhile, high-tax, high-regulation, low-growth states such as New York and California don’t have better schools. They have worse schools — and, usually, worse performance in other public services.

I used to point out that North Carolina’s schools ranked higher, as well. Not anymore.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).