A third of K-12 students are behind grade level
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About a third of U.S. K-12 students this school year are behind grade level, according to a recent survey.
Why it matters: Schools are still dealing with the long-term effects of remote schooling and other pandemic-era learning disruptions.
How it works: The data, current as of the end of the 2023-24 school year, is from the School Pulse Panel, a monthly National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) survey of nearly 4,000 nationally representative grade schools.
- For the June 2024 data, 1,651 of those schools responded.
- The idea is to track key education metrics in near real time as teachers and administrators grapple with post-pandemic learning loss and other challenges.
The big picture: The 2023-24 results are pretty much flat from the end of the 2021-22 school year, when 33% of students were behind grade level.
- But NCES cautions that it changed how it asked this question for the 2024 survey, so the results aren't directly comparable.
Zoom in: Regionally speaking, schools out West are doing notably worse than those in other areas, with nearly 40% of students behind grade level.
Between the lines: Looking at the data in other ways reveals troubling trends — for example, 42% of kids in schools with more than 75% students of color are behind grade level, compared to just 22% at schools with 25% or less students of color.
- 38% of students at city schools, meanwhile, are behind grade level versus just 31% of those in the suburbs.
What's next: Schools are reporting success with strategies meant to address learning recovery, including hiring more teachers (55% of schools say that's "very" or "extremely" effective) and spending more time on target areas (35%) and family engagement or outreach (18%).
