A simplified description of the methods used to create the SEDA 2023 data shown in the 2019-2023 Education Recovery Explorer is described on this page. For more detail, see the SEDA 2023 Technical Documentation.

What is SEDA 2023?

SEDA 2023 is a special release of the Stanford Education Data Archive that can be viewed on the 2019-2023 Education Recovery Explorer. This release is designed to provide insight into how school district average achievement in 2023, three years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, compares to achievement in 2022, two years after the onset of the pandemic, and 2019, the year prior to the pandemic.

Source Data & Construction

The construction of the SEDA 2023 data follows similar steps to that of SEDA 4.1 described in the 2009-2019 Opportunity Explorer Methods. However, there are four key differences we discuss here:

Source Data

The state proficiency data used to construct the SEDA 2023 test score estimates come from two sources. The first source is the U.S. Department of Education’s EDFacts data, which is the source data used to construct SEDA 4.1. However, because EDFacts data was not yet available for 2022 or 2023, we used publicly released 2022 and 2023 data from state websites. Notably, not all states released 2022 and 2023 proficiency data to date and some state-released data was not sufficiently complete for our use, therefore only a subset of U.S. states is included in the current data.

Like SEDA 4.1, because different states use different tests and proficiency thresholds, the test score estimates derived from the state data sources were not readily comparable across states, grades, or years. Therefore, we also draw on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2019 and 2022 administrations in 4th and 8th grade to link the estimates to a scale that is comparable among states and over grades and years.

Definition of a School District

In SEDA 2023, we report estimates for administrative school districts. Administrative school districts operate sets of public and charter schools. The schools operated by each school district are identified using the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) school and district identifiers. Most commonly, administrative school districts operate local public schools within a given physical boundary; these are what we refer to as “traditional public school districts.” There are specialized administrative districts, like charter school and virtual school districts, that do not have a physical boundary. These districts will not appear on our maps.

Administrative districts differ from the geographic districts used in SEDA 4.1. The key difference is that for geographic school districts, we “reassign” charter schools to the district in which they are physically located (regardless of the entity that operates the schools). We do no reassignment of charter schools in producing the administrative district estimates; charter schools are attached to the traditional public or charter district that operates them. For more information on geographic districts, we refer you to the SEDA 4.1 Technical Documentation and the 2009-2019 Opportunity Explorer Methods.

The choice to use administrative districts in SEDA 2023 is two-fold. First, one of the aims of SEDA 2023 is to help school districts understand their learning recovery needs. Administrative districts have authority to set policy for their schools, as such it is most useful for the estimates to reflect only the schools under their operation. Second, to construct geographic school districts, we need data for individual charter schools. While many states report such data in 2023, data for many schools is often suppressed due to the small numbers of students taking assessments. Because of this we cannot reliably construct geographic school district estimates for the 2022 and 2023 school years.

Linking

For 2019 and 2022, we use the proficiency threshold linking methodology described here. At the end of this step, we have proficiency thresholds in 2019 and 2022 that are linked to a common scale—the NAEP scale.

We must use a different process in 2023, because we do not have 2023 NAEP data. Instead, for 2023, we use the 2022 linked proficiency thresholds. For this approach to enable accurate comparisons of 2022-2023 test score changes among districts in the same state, states’ test score scales and proficiency thresholds must be comparable from 2022 to 2023. We exclude 2023 data for states where we found evidence of changes in state assessments. For this approach to enable accurate comparisons of 2022-2023 test score changes among districts in different states, we also assume that state test score trends from 2022 to 2023 are comparable to unmeasured NAEP trends from 2022 to 2023.

Available Estimates and Scales

In the 2019-2023 Education Recovery Explorer and the downloadable files, we provide the following district-level estimates by subgroup (where data are available):

  • 2019-2022 change in average math scores
  • 2019-2022 change in average reading scores
  • 2022-2023 change in average math scores
  • 2022-2023 change in average reading scores
  • 2019-2023 change in average math scores
  • 2019-2023 change in average reading scores

We report all test score changes in grade levels. In this scale, each unit is interpretable as 1 grade level. For example:

  • A 2019-2022 change in average math scores of -1 grade levels means that students in 2022 scored, on average, 1 grade level below their 2019 counterparts.

Grade levels are defined using the 2019 national NAEP 4th and 8th grade data (“the 2019 norm group”). We approximate the average number of NAEP points student test scores differ per grade in each subject using the 4th and 8th grade data. We then rescale the NAEP point scale estimates using those parameters.

Note that SEDA 2023 grade levels are not equivalent to SEDA 4.1 grade levels. In SEDA 4.1, the per-grade growth is defined by a 4-cohort norm group (rather than the 2019 norm group, described above). For more details on how we calculate SEDA 4.1 growth, we refer you to the SEDA 4.1 Technical Documentation and the 2009-2019 Opportunity Explorer Methods. For those using our downloadable test score files, the estimates in the explorer at the Empirical Bayes (EB) estimates.

Interpretation and Data Accuracy

We think of changes in average scores as reflective of changes in the average educational opportunities available to students between two time points. For example, if the 2019-2022 change in average math or reading achievement is negative, it means that students in 2022 in that district scored lower, on average, than students in 2019 in that district. This suggests that students in 2022 had fewer educational opportunities (in their schools, homes, neighborhoods, and beyond) to learn to date than the student population in 2019.

Changes in test scores during and after the pandemic may be due to a variety of mechanisms. The test score data in SEDA 2023 may only enable understanding of some of these mechanisms. To provide context for interpreting the data, we include data flags and margins of error.

Population change flag

In many districts, the student population shifted from 2019 to 2022; the data for 2023 is not yet available. Using enrollment data from the CCD, we flag any districts where: (a) the total number of students enrolled changed by more than 20%; and/or (b) the percentage of students from any racial group changed by more than 5 percentage points. For details on the calculation of this population change flag, see the SEDA 2023 technical documentation.

Margin of error

In some cases, estimates are imprecise, such that a change in average scores is not statistically distinguishable from zero. We have constructed margins of error (“standard errors”) for each of the estimates to help users identify such cases. We also do not show any estimates on the website where the margin of error is large. For those downloading the data and using it in analysis, standard errors are included in the downloadable data files.