Ever since my colleagues at the National Assessment Governing Board announced our plans to release the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress results on schedule this month, there’s been speculation about how those results could influence the upcoming midterm elections. The NAEP Long-term Trend results for 9-year-olds, released in September, confirmed that the math and reading skills of American students had dropped sharply over the course of the pandemic. The Main NAEP results provide results for students in both 4th and 8th grade. More importantly, they make it possible to see which states and large school districts fared best in the Covid era—and which lost the most ground. Could the results make a difference in competitive governors’ races in states like Kansas, Nevada, and Wisconsin? Could they become a partisan talking point in congressional races nationwide?
