By Claire Partain, Staff Writer - Houston Chronicle
View the article on Houston Chronicle website.

Ashley Gold, math teacher, left, works with Santiago Pineda at Northbrook High School in the Spring Branch ISD on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025 in Houston. Even though no school systems across the country have recovered from COVID-era academic slips, but there are a few districts there are a few districts, like Spring Branch ISD, that are scoring better than they were in 2019 on national tests.
Brett Coomer/Staff photographer - Houston Chronicle

Students remain half a grade level behind post-COVID. Here's how Spring Branch ISD bucked that trend.

When Christina Quintero notices academic and behavioral struggles in her two children today, her mind shifts back to five years ago.

Quintero's kids were among the 1.6 billion worldwide whose schooling was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a move to online learning, a rise in chronic absenteeism and mounting effects on students' mental and physical health, some students fell more than a grade level behind in certain subjects during the pandemic and haven't rebounded five years later.

"My child was set back, and she was one of those who was at the top of her class," the Houston ISD parent said. "It was difficult for her to be able to concentrate, and a lot of students were like that."

No states improved on both math and reading scores in statewide assessments and the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress — a benchmark intended to serve as the "Nation's Report Card" — when compared to pre-pandemic scores, according to a nationwide analysis called the Education Recovery Scorecard. Five years later, achievement gaps between higher- and lower-income districts have only widened, said Sean Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist who worked on the scorecard.

"High-poverty districts lost a lot more ground during the pandemic," Reardon told the Chronicle. "The recovery has been relatively equal in high- and low-poverty districts, but because the loss was so much greater in high-poverty districts, the cumulative effect over five years is that high-poverty districts are much further behind rich districts than they were in 2019."

Still, there are some bright spots. While no states improved in both subject overall, more than 100 districts nationwide — including Compton, California; Ector County, Texas and Houston's Spring Branch ISD — fully recovered and even improved upon 2019 scores. And while the $190 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds that were poured into schools did not fully staunch academic wounds created by COVID-19, they did help soften the blow, Reardon said.

"Things would have been worse now had they not had the money. And in particular, things would be even worse for the poorer districts than they are now," Reardon said.

Sudden changes

The Education Recovery Scorecard analysis, which combines the work of researchers from Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth, offers a glimpse of students' academic progress since COVID across state and district lines. In its latest February report, researchers studied students' state standardized test scores and NAEP data across roughly 11,000 school districts in 43 states to measure test score changes from Spring 2019 to Spring 2022 and from Spring 2022 to Spring 2024.

By the time all states studied had resumed state standardized testing in 2022, the average U.S. student had lost half a grade level in math and a third of a grade level in reading, according to the scorecard. As of Spring 2024, students remain nearly half a grade level behind in both subjects. Reading scores have slipped even further when compared to 2022.

“The rescue phase is over. The federal relief dollars are gone. It is time to pivot from short-term recovery to longer term challenges such as reducing absenteeism and addressing the slide in literacy," said Harvard education economist Thomas Kane, who worked on the scorecard.

When Houston ISD unveiled its virtual learning program on March 30, 2020, Quintero said inequities were immediate. As a stay-at-home mother to her then pre-K and kindergarten students, Quintero could help them access their classes and spend extra time on subjects where they struggled. As a bilingual parent at Port Houston Elementary School, in which more than 70% of students were enrolled in bilingual and English language learning programs in 2020-21, Quintero often found herself serving as a liason for Spanish-speaking families amid rapid-fire schooling changes.

Many families did not have consistent Internet access or devices for their children in a district in which around 80% of students are low-income. For others, strained by the economic and human losses from COVID, academics fell on the back-burner, Quintero said.

"Parents were just trying to get through the day-to-day and make sure that they had food on the table," Quintero said.

Signs of progress

Spring Branch ISD Superintendent Jennifer Blaine felt the immediate impact of online learning when her son, then a high schooler, rarely logged into his online classes at home.

The west Houston district was one of around 100 nationwide to improve upon its pre-pandemic math and reading NAEP scores, which Blaine attributes to the district's back-to-basics instructional approach and its decision to begin offering in-person classes by September 2020.

Spring Branch ISD among few districts to rebound from pre-pandemic scores in both subjects

District is among around 100 nationwide to improve in both math and reading tests in 2024 when compared to the 2019 national average.

Researchers combined state standardized tests and national NAEP assessments to compare districts from across the country from 2019-2024.
Chart: Claire Partain Source: Education Recovery Scorecard

"I never was comfortable with kids being at home learning online, especially the little kids," Blaine said. "Learning those academic and social skills, the ability to be cooperative and communicate and work together, all of that happens in the classroom. It doesn't happen behind a computer screen by yourself in the living room with the TV in the background ... what I believe in is school connectedness."

High-poverty districts tended to spend more time in virtual learning, and districts that spent more time online did often see more learning loss, Reardon said. But results were more clearly tied to how districts spent their ESSER funds.

By the third ESSER phase, Spring Branch ISD had invested into afterschool and summer school programs, including specialized programs for emergent bilingual students, a Newcomer Language Institute for recent arrivals and an Extended School Year program for special needs students.

The district also increased its professional development and hired additional literacy, math, and science instructional specialists and aides in all of its kindergarten classrooms.

For Berenice Garcilazo Avelino and Rose Landin, now both juniors at Spring Branch's Northbrook High School, catch-up came through little moments like one-on-one Zoom sessions with teachers and after-school tutorials.

"I never felt like I got caught up (until) maybe this year," Garcilazo Avelino said. "During that time we were so behind, but now —" Landin interrupted. "Everything feels normal."

Lasting inequality

Other Houston-area districts showed signs of recovery. Pearland ISD saw some of the largest improvements in math of the 500 largest districts surveyed in the scorecard. And while Houston ISD's NAEP scores remained relatively flat in 2024, the district improved within some student subgroups and bucked a state- and nationwide decline in most subjects when compared to 2022 scores.

Houston ISD improved in math scores as state remained flat

Houston ISD's state and nationwide math test scores improved from 2022 to 2024 but remain below the 2019 national average.

Houston ISD has recovered more swiftly in its math scores than the state of Texas when compared to the 2019 national average.
Chart: Claire Partain Source: Education Recovery Scorecard

Parent Brianna Van Borssum often calls HISD's Askew Elementary four schools in one. Askew is the only campus that both hosts the district's Vanguard program for gifted students and falls within state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles' New Education System. It is also home to a diverse community of refugees, other zoned students and a sizable special education population, Van Borssum said.

As a member of the school's parent-teacher organization, Van Borssum saw the campus scramble to find Internet hotspots for parents and tackle language barriers at the onset of the pandemic. She also sees evidence of the nationwide drop in literacy that preceded COVID-19.

Students in Houston ISD and across Texas have lost ground in reading since 2019

Students' reading scores continue to slip nationwide in trend that preceded pandemic

Although Houston ISD bucked some trends in NAEP scores in 2024, the district lost ground in combined state and nationwide testing scores when compared to the 2019 national average.
Chart: Claire Partain Source: Education Recovery Scorecard

But thanks to having her mother to help at home and the determination of Askew's staff throughout the pandemic, Van Borssum said her now-fifth grader has fully recovered academically.

"It was a rigorous program to begin with and they did an incredible job of suiting it to the environment that all the kids had to be," Van Borssum said. "But the fact that we're about to send some kids off to middle school who have a hard time reading and spelling at their grade level, I hate it and I'm scared for them."

Racial and socioeconomic disparities within many districts have also increased since 2019, even from within rebounded districts such as Spring Branch ISD, according to the scorecard. And as ESSER funds dried and statewide per-pupil funding remained stagnant, districts including Spring Branch and Houston ISD cut dozens of staff positions, eliminated some social-emotional services and considered closing campuses for the 2024-25 school year.

Five years after she first noticed learning loss in her children, Quintero said her daughter, now a fifth-grader, remains two grade levels behind in reading. Quintero is worried students' futures will be impacted and inequalities will only deepen if the current cohort remains behind throughout their academic careers.

The pandemic unevenly affected students in math across socioeconomic lines

But grade-level gaps for student groups within districts slimmed slightly in reading for low-income and Hispanic students.

Researchers from Harvard, Dartmouth and Stanford used state and nationwide testing data to compare students for the Education Recovery Scorecard. Ec. Dis. represents students who are economically disadvantaged.
Chart: Claire Partain Source: Education Recovery Scorecard

Future reform

New Texas House legislation would help combat that loss by increasing per-pupil funding by $220 — significantly less than what public school advocates say they need.

The bills could also overhaul the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness exam, or STAAR, and change the way in which special education is funded. Districts like Houston ISD could also receive teacher pay raises totaling up to $38 million in a bill designed to combat a statewide teaching shortage.

Recovery, some say, can also come through smaller changes on the ground.

Tyler Segura, an English teacher at Spring Branch's Northbrook High School, began teaching for the first time in August 2020. In addition to teaching students at grade-level and reading full novels in class, Segura said he and other Northbrook teachers provide more social-emotional support to students post-pandemic.

"What I trained myself to do was to let go of the assumptions I would have as to where a student should be, meet them where they were, and then get them to the expectation that we have for them," Segura said. "To create that culture in the classroom, I had to be as welcoming as possible, as kind as possible, as encouraging as possible. It was just making sure that I greeted every student, that every student felt like they were seen and heard."

States and districts must double down on academic catch-up efforts and continue to provide additional resources, particularly for low-income schools, according to the scorecard. Community leaders will need to join schools to combat students' chronic absenteeism, which has only exacerbated pandemic slides. Parents will need to be increasingly engaged in their students' progress, and schools will need to look back at their most effective recent reforms and policies, Reardon said.

"Sometimes the most effective schools aren't the ones that have some shiny new curriculum and fancy technology," Reardon said. "They're just schools where all the adults pay attention to the kids and make sure nobody falls through the cracks."

March 13, 2025 | Updated March 13, 2025 10:11 a.m.