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National test scores released late last month painted a bleak picture of academic recovery for both Texas and the U.S. following the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown that began in 2020.
But researchers found that there were positive signs for individual districts. The 2025 Education Recovery Scorecard released on Tuesday listed more than 100 districts nationwide that returned to pre-pandemic levels in both math and reading, including nearly a dozen districts in Texas.
Texas districts who recovered from the pandemic include Spring Branch ISD in Houston and Southside ISD and Somerset ISD in San Antonio. Dozens more school districts were closer to recovery than other districts with similar poverty levels, including Frisco ISD and Houston ISD.
“I think it's remarkable that Houston is almost back to where they were in 2019 in reading,” said Thomas Kane of Harvard University, one of the lead researchers on the project. “Here in Massachusetts, it's not size — it's income that best predicts whether you've caught up.”
Houston ISD’s poverty rate is higher than 75%. Southside and Somerset have even higher poverty rates.
Austin ISD and North East ISD in San Antonio are doing better than average in reading recovery, but about on par with the state in math. Dallas ISD is recovering at the same rate as other high-poverty Texas districts.
Fort Bend ISD, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, El Paso ISD, and Northside ISD in San Antonio are all farther behind than the average Texas district at their poverty level, according to the report.
Arlington ISD and Aldine ISD are the two large Texas school districts that are the farthest behind. In 2024, they were about a grade level below where they were in 2019 in both reading and math. Fort Worth ISD is also more than a grade level behind in reading.
The Scorecard was produced by research teams at Harvard and Stanford. In order to drill down to the district level, they placed state standardized test scores on the same scale as national tests.
Kane called the effort a sea change during a call with reporters.
“If parents and policymakers and school board members are asking, ‘Are we back to 2019 levels?’ If you were limited to the state test scores, that would be very hard to answer,” Kane explained. “Different states set their own proficiency thresholds, and so it's impossible to compare for district level data from state to state. To make matters worse, states often change their proficiency threshold.”
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, is designed to be compared over time.
According to the Scorecard’s new report, Texas is doing a better job at returning to pre-pandemic levels in reading than most states, ranking eighth in the nation. In 2024, Texas students in third through eighth grades were about a third of a grade level below their 2019 peers.
However, Texas fourth and eighth graders scored lower in reading than they have in decades on the Nation’s Report Card in 2024. Sean Reardon with Stanford said the high rank on the Scorecard is a sign that pandemic-era losses have been less severe in Texas, not a sign that Texas students are reading at high levels.
“Seven states recovered more than Texas, but that doesn't mean their scores were eighth highest in the country. It means their losses were eighth smallest,” Reardon said. “We're sort of ranking them according to how well they're doing at getting their students back to where they were in 2019, and Texas is eighth in reading on that measure, but much lower if you just rank them on absolute scores.”
Texas was almost half a grade below the national average in reading before the pandemic began in 2019.
Texas students were doing better in math before the pandemic, scoring slightly above the national average. However, their scores dropped half a grade level in 2022, and they didn’t improve in 2024. That places Texas 31st in the country in math recovery.
The Educational Recovery Scorecard considers a student to be on grade level if they score at the 2019 national average for their grade.
Kane added that Texas should be concerned about both reading and math: “I wouldn’t pick and choose. Focus on both. And honestly, I think it's going to be really hard to catch up in any state without reducing absenteeism.”
The Scorecard found that chronic absenteeism is making it harder for districts to recover from the pandemic and increasing the disparity in scores between high poverty and low poverty districts.
The most affluent districts were nearly four times as likely to have recovered from the pandemic as districts with the most low-income students, and high-poverty districts also saw a greater increase in absenteeism.
Because of that spike in absenteeism, Kane and Reardon said local officials and businesses should step in to help with things like public information campaigns and activities that attract students to school.
“It's one of the very few things that folks outside of schools can be doing to help schools right now,” Kane added.
They also said it is important for teachers to be empowered to tell parents their children are not at grade level so that parents will sign their children up for tutoring and summer school when their schools offer it.
“From the beginning of the recovery period, parents have been misinformed about the impact of the pandemic on their children's achievement,” Kane said. “And I think part of that is due to the fact that what do parents see? Parents see grades. Grades have not declined in most places.”
The Education Recovery Scorecard results were released hours after The Trump administration announced the termination of contracts with the National Center for Education Statistics, which makes the collection of such data possible.
"The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the second oldest and among the largest federal statistical agencies, provides nonpartisan and unbiased information on important education indicators," said Felice J. Levine, Executive Director of the American Educational Research Association.
"We are deeply concerned about actions by the new administration to terminate 169 contracts within the Institute of Education Sciences, including those that NCES holds for the collection and reporting of education statistics. The robust collection and analysis of data are essential for ensuring quality education."
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