Nine success stories
Researchers at Harvard and Stanford universities combined 2024 NAEP scores with state test scores for 35 million students to understand which districts are making progress—and which may need a new strategy altogether.
As part of the release of the newest Education Recovery Scorecard report, “Pivoting from Pandemic Recovery to Long-Term Reform: A District-Level Analysis”, the research team spotlights nine district success stories.
Who are these districts, why are they spotlighted, and what lessons might we learn from them?
Who’s in the spotlight
It’s a diverse bunch, ranging from urban districts Compton Unified in southern California and the District of Columbia Public Schools in Washington to rural Natchitoches, Louisiana. Six states and DC are represented in the nine districts. Four districts are in the south (Natchitoches; Maury County, TN; DeKalb County, AL; and Birmingham City, AL); two are in California (Compton and Monterey Peninsula); one in Texas (Ector County); and two in the northeast (DCPS and Union City, NJ).
Why these districts
A few districts have reached or surpassed pre-pandemic scores in math and reading (Union City, Compton, Maury County, Natchitoches). Some are highlighted only for math progress (Birmingham, DeKalb, Monterey, Ector County); just one district is in the spotlight only for reading progress (DCPS).
The Education Recovery Scorecard team doesn’t really explain why they picked these districts. I’d hope there are more than nine that have seen progress! It’s possible they felt these nine had some clear strategy supporting their success, and they do provide some overview of what it is those districts have done.
Tutoring
Five of the nine districts cite tutoring as a key strategy underpinning their success. I’ve seen tutoring in many schools in both Ector County and DCPS, and I can attest that the district-wide emphasis on tutoring has led to strong implementation and real improvements in student learning. (And you can read a lot more about this in my book, The Future of Tutoring, coming in October 2025!)
Maury County, Union City, and Birmingham also credit tutoring for at least some of their success. Tennessee and New Jersey, where Maury County and Union City are located, respectively, are both states that have made financial investments in tutoring beyond federal COVID dollars and that have offered implementation support to districts and schools that want to boost student learning with tutoring. Both districts primarily hired their own teachers to tutor during lunchtime, after-school, or other allotted times. Using teachers is tricky if you want to truly embed tutoring within the school day, but it can be done. Districts that pursue this option often say they find a benefit from using educators familiar with the curriculum, and hiring people already employed by the district cuts down on recruitment and other HR commitments.
Supporting teachers
All nine districts list at least one strategy that relates directly to teachers and teaching. Two districts, Ector County and Maury County, have invested in growing the teacher pipeline. Ector County launched new pipelines with local colleges and built a one-year teacher residency program. This is on top of leveraging $7 million of additional state funding for performance pay through the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment. Maury County has focused on a Grow-Your-Own effort to grow local teachers, including creating pathways for current non-educator staff to become licensed teachers themselves.
Four districts credit new and improved instructional materials or curricular approach, including training for current teachers. Compton has hired 18 reading specialists in recent years, conducted dyslexia screenings at all elementary schools, and adopted new instructional materials. DCPS built a new literacy curriculum for the district, including targeted interventions, and has provided hundreds of teachers with LETRS training (the most popular science of reading professional development program). Natchitoches also launched a new reading curriculum and required all teachers to participate in a two-year 60-hour training on the science of reading. More broadly, Natchitoches’ approach leans heavily on the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching both for their teacher evaluation system and professional development. Every school’s instructional leadership team meets weekly to identify the school’s needs based on student data, and then creates lesson plans for the week based on those data. I visited a school using this system in Louisiana, though not in Natchitoches, and I’ve never seen more data in use, both in teacher practice and lining the walls of classrooms.
DeKalb has focused on math, encouraged by the Alabama Numeracy Act of 2022, using materials endorsed by the Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative. Also in Alabama, Birmingham focused on more adding instructional time rather than new materials. Can students learn more by quite literally spending more time learning? This includes “intersessions”, optional multi-day academic programs offered over holiday weekends and school breaks, as well as other enrichment opportunities after-school and in the summer.
District strategy works best when it is specific to district needs. Union City is a majority Spanish-speaking district, and the leadership realized that even after students exited formal “English language learner” status, they often still needed support. The district now pays for select teachers to get ELL/ESL certification to continue supporting the needs of their multi-language learners, even after they are considered fluent in English.
Odd man out
Reading the nine profiles, Monterey strikes me as the odd man out. Their strategy seems to be focused on effective curriculum implementation, but I can’t tell from the profile what that really means. One associate superintendent is quoted saying that every single teacher in every middle school classroom now uses the curriculum with integrity. That’s impressive, if true, but not entirely satisfying for changing elementary school outcomes, for example. I’d like to know more about how Monterey made the cut.
What’s the takeaway?
There are two principal takeaways from these nine districts.
A lot of the most impactful work started well before the pandemic. Union City, Compton, and Ector County in particular are places where long-time superintendents have fought for many years pre-pandemic to build foundations, partnerships, and strong practices that are paying off. This means that regardless of pandemic learning loss, the education field knows what needs to be done. Good leaders following a strategic path, with a focus on academic supports and interventions that help all students.
What seems to be working are efforts to bolster and accelerate good old-fashioned academic learning. Tutoring, added instructional time, better training for teachers to make use of good materials — this isn’t fancy or futuristic. It’s teaching and learning, the core of what school is.
There are other districts making progress, though there remain too many schools and districts where students are learning too little, too slowly. Most districts in the country should be able to relate in some way to one of these nine success stories, and hopefully by the next Education Recovery Scorecard report, there are dozens more of these stories to explore.