An analysis by the New York Times of a study from Harvard and Stanford Universities revealed that Madison School District continues to battle pandemic-related learning loss, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. While the district’s elementary and middle schoolers’ math scores roughly matched the national average as of 2019, they lost substantial ground amid nationwide classroom closures.
Among Wisconsin’s 10 largest school districts, Madison — which is the second-largest after Milwaukee — ranked seventh last year in math. Madison was also found to be the worst-performing district on the math metric studied when compared to other large Dane County school districts included in the data.
According to the New York Times, the universities’ analysis was “the first national comparison of recovery at the school district level” and “looked at test score data for third- through eighth-grade students in about 30 states — representing about 60% of the U.S. public school population in those grades.” Recovery was measured as of spring 2023.
