Fourth graders Rand Said (left) and Jaida Northup fill in math formulas on a white board Friday at Kahoa Elementary School. State test scores released Monday highlight wide gaps between students who learned remotely last year and their in-person classmates, including at Kahoa.
JUSTIN WAN, Journal Star
Fourth grader Marquavious Irving writes down a math formula Friday at Kahoa Elementary School.
JUSTIN WAN, Journal Star
Fourth graders Ella Wiltshire (left) and Nalah Harvey work on math calculations Dec. 3 at Kahoa Elementary School.
JUSTIN WAN, Journal Star file photo
Emily Schmidt teaches a fourth-grade class on Dec. 3 at Kahoa Elementary School.
For principals like Kahoa Elementary School's Terri Nelson, numbers can tell a story.
"I'm kind of a data person," Nelson said. "We're continually assessing our students to see where their needs are."
One crucial piece of that includes state assessments in math and English administered annually to students in grades 3-8 and ACT tests for high school juniors.
Last spring, the Nebraska Department of Education piloted a new, shorter version of the state assessments that focused primarily on core content to gauge the pandemic's impact on students.
For Lincoln Public Schools and Nelson, this new assessment confirmed what educators already knew: in-person learners fared better than students working remotely last school year.
As a whole, LPS students' proficiencies in English and math were above the state average, according to scores released Monday. Statewide, 46% of students in grades 3-8 were proficient in math, while 51% were proficient at LPS. In English, 48% of Nebraska students met the benchmark compared to 53% of Lincoln students.
But remote learners — defined by LPS as those students who learned from home for at least four weeks — were generally below the state medium.
The gaps are more glaring in math. In Lincoln schools, the average percentage difference in proficiencies between remote and in-person students in math was 12.4, compared to 7.9 in reading. Fifty-four percent of in-person fifth graders, for example, were proficient in math, compared to just 40% of LPS remote learners.
On a micro-scale, these gaps are even wider at some schools — including Kahoa, where the proficiency difference between remote and in-person learners is as great as 30% in some cases.
"For the most part, it did not surprise us," Nelson said. "We felt as we looked at the students we knew came back from remote (learning), how hard that was to get back on track."
That's why it's important to be able to use data, such as the state assessments, to tailor instruction to specific students, Nelson said. Kahoa, like all LPS schools, has relied on federal coronavirus relief money to catch up students through afterschool tutoring and reading and math intervention programs.
"We have a sense of urgency to get students caught up now," she said.
The latest batch of scores is a touchstone by which schools can understand growth out of the pandemic, education officials said. But they warned that drawing comparisons to past assessments is difficult given the revamped test and COVID-19's impact.
"This is just a one-year piece," said Matt Larson, associate superintendent of instruction at LPS. "No one had ever been given this assessment before."
The state had planned to roll out the modified assessment in 2019-20, before the pandemic scuttled testing that spring. So the state went ahead with a pilot program to gather data on the new assessment model last spring.
Under the new state assessment, which combines elements from the old format and the MAP Growth assessment, students would be assessed throughout the year in a more holistic format.
"It's our first real aggregated, scaled look at academic impacts from the pandemic," said state Education Commissioner Matthew Blomstedt. "I'm big on knowing something ... and we have a lot of knowns through this assessment."
At LPS, the nexus between remote learning and poorer assessments was one significant finding, Larson said. And the more remote students a school had, the less proficient its students were, he added.
At the pandemic's peak last school year, the district had over 24% of students learning remotely, with teachers juggling both in-person and virtual students. And high schools operated at 50% capacity with alternating schedules until the fourth quarter.
Students in poverty at LPS — defined as those enrolled in the federal free- and reduced-lunch program — were even more likely than remote learners to fall short of proficiency benchmarks.
While every racial subgroup of students saw impacts from the pandemic, achievement gaps between white students and students of color appear to have widened over the past 18 months. Fifty-five percent of white students met proficiency benchmarks in math, compared to just 19% of Black students and 28% of Hispanic students in LPS.
English language learners and students with special needs were also hit especially hard during the pandemic, given that many routines those students rely on were upended, Blomstedt said.
While participation was down — 8,500 fewer students across Nebraska were assessed — around 94% were still tested. Federal accountability guidelines require that states test 95% of their students, but those requirements were waived during the pandemic.
Additionally, the Nebraska Department of Education's school performance classifications remained unchanged from the 2018-19 school year due to the pandemic. Those rankings marked the first time LPS had no schools in the lowest "needs improvement" category.
It will take some time to gauge how Nebraska stacks up nationally, Blomstedt said, but the fact that most students in Nebraska were attending classes in person in the fall of 2020 certainly helped give the state a head-start.
And early indications show that's true: Nebraska students scored above the national average in all testing categories, according to the National Assessment of Progress.
The state assessment must be taken in-person, which meant school officials had to line up testing times for students still learning remotely. Still, fewer students took the test, Larson said. That impact was greater at the high school level in Lincoln, where 13% of juniors were unassessed.
That had an impact on ACT proficiencies: LPS juniors were a percentage point shy from the state average in both math and English proficiency — 43% and 45% respectively — which is down from before the pandemic, when scores were steadily climbing, Larson said.
But since most juniors who are unassessed are marked not proficient, that number is a bit skewed. And Larson pointed out that LPS had more remote learners than nearly all other schools in the state.
Proficiency by district, 2021
District scores
(% proficient)
ASSESSMENT
ASSESSMENT
ACT
ACT
ACT
English
Math
English
Math
Science
STATEWIDE
48%
46%
46%
44%
50%
LPS
53%
51%
45%
43%
48%
Beatrice
42%
39%
53%
45%
57%
Bellevue
49%
48%
48%
43%
56%
Columbus
44%
40%
38%
36%
46%
Crete
47%
48%
31%
36%
36%
Elkhorn
76%
76%
78%
79%
78%
Fremont
34%
33%
46%
40%
48%
Grand Island
38%
37%
19%
22%
27%
Gretna
64%
64%
63%
63%
74%
Kearney
55%
56%
45%
47%
51%
Malcolm
66%
52%
63%
59%
63%
Millard
60%
58%
62%
59%
66%
Norfolk
47%
44%
37%
44%
45%
Norris
61%
52%
57%
62%
66%
North Platte
48%
50%
31%
31%
41%
Omaha
28%
20%
21%
16%
24%
Omaha Westside
56%
51%
55%
50%
57%
Palmyra
60%
49%
50%
43%
50%
Papillion-La Vista
57%
53%
57%
57%
60%
Raymond Central
48%
47%
48%
44%
57%
Seward
64%
74%
63%
69%
66%
Syracuse
57%
66%
60%
62%
64%
Waverly
52%
53%
49%
55%
60%
York
51%
56%
49%
50%
52%
In-person students weren't totally immune from the impacts of the pandemic either, said Sarah Salem, director of continuous improvement and professional learning. That, in turn, likely had an impact on testing.
"Each kid had a different story," Salem said. "Even in-person learners were dealing with a lot — parents losing a job or a sibling who was quarantined or being nervous about grandma, grandpa."
Despite uncertainties about the pandemic and the arrival of the omicron variant, LPS is looking forward. It has $61.4 million in a third wave of coronavirus relief funds from the federal government to accelerate learning for those students who fell behind.
A bulk of that funding has been used for expanded summer school, afterschool programs, interventionists and additional professional development for teachers. And LPS said the latest state data allows it to steer funding to schools that need it.
At Kahoa, the data can be used at an individual level to guide instruction.
If a certain group of students, for example, are shown to have missed certain math content, the school can set up specific afterschool programs to address that.
"I think for us it's more important to look at individual students — what do we need to attack and use it then to make our instruction fit our need," Nelson said.
It's impossible to foresee the long-term effects of the pandemic and remote learning on students, but Nelson hopes these interventions currently in place will turn the tide.
"I don't think there is a more important job than to get those kids caught up," she said. "Now is the time."
Proficiency by LPS school, 2021
LPS scores
(% proficient)
ELEMENTARIES
English
Math
Adams
73%
76%
Arnold
44%
32%
Beattie
59%
55%
Belmont
44%
34%
Brownell
50%
37%
Calvert
47%
31%
Campbell
38%
34%
Cavett
70%
69%
Clinton
30%
30%
Eastridge
55%
51%
Elliott
42%
35%
Everett
37%
24%
Fredstrom
52%
54%
Hartley
38%
28%
Hill
70%
59%
Holmes
61%
47%
Humann
72%
67%
Huntington
32%
23%
Kahoa
66%
64%
Kloefkorn
77%
72%
Kooser
55%
49%
Lakeview
35%
29%
Maxey
70%
69%
McPhee
36%
22%
Meadow Lane
51%
39%
Morley
69%
56%
Norwood Park
43%
30%
Pershing
49%
50%
Prescott
52%
36%
Pyrtle
68%
60%
Randolph
53%
40%
Riley
44%
42%
Roper
44%
46%
Rousseau
68%
63%
Saratoga
36%
25%
Sheridan
74%
64%
West Lincoln
32%
29%
Wysong
75%
68%
Zeman
58%
49%
MIDDLE SCHOOLS
English
Math
Culler
32%
30%
Dawes
37%
32%
Goodrich
36%
38%
Irving
55%
49%
Lefler
45%
45%
Lux
66%
68%
Mickle
55%
53%
Moore
69%
78%
Park
37%
37%
Pound
59%
60%
Schoo
50%
48%
Scott
65%
70%
HIGH SCHOOLS
English
Math
Science
Lincoln East
59%
58%
63%
Lincoln High
36%
34%
34%
North Star
29%
31%
34%
Northeast
32%
30%
34%
Southeast
49%
48%
53%
Southwest
62%
58%
64%
Breaking down Lincoln's public schools: Enrollment, test scores and more
Fourth graders Rand Said (left) and Jaida Northup fill in math formulas on a white board Friday at Kahoa Elementary School. State test scores released Monday highlight wide gaps between students who learned remotely last year and their in-person classmates, including at Kahoa.