In an ongoing analysis of the nation's 100 most high-profile school districts, the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a non-partisan research and policy analysis organization, found slightly more than half of the districts are offering some extent of in-person instruction, an increase from one-quarter at the beginning of the school year.

Most districts surveyed (80%) said they had plans to assess students. However, the analysis found fewer offered "comprehensive" and district-wide plans to identify and address learning losses, with 59% lacking transparent plans around what kinds of assessments will be used and which data will be made available to parents or the public.

CRPE said a lack of district-wide plans "means students risk receiving different treatment based on which school they attend or who their teacher is."

"Instead, we would love to see more districts creating a universal approach to collecting data on learning loss, communicating their expectations clearly to families, and using that data to inform how they allocate resources across schools," Bree Dusseault, one of the authors of the analysis, told Education Dive in a statement.

Texas' San Antonio Independent School District is highlighted as an example. The district plans to administer assessments and then incorporate test results alongside other data to create individualized learning plans for each student that all their teachers can monitor.

Prior to fall 2020, researchers and educators warned against misinterpreting assessment results ​or assessing without clear goals. Used the wrong way, assessment results could lead to harmful decisions, like holding students back a grade or providing students with low-level content, assessment experts said.

However, assessments have the potential to be "really meaningful" when married to clear district goals, parent-teacher communication, and teacher training around data interpretation and instruction, said Robin Lake, director of CRPE.

Read the full article about learning losses by Naaz Modan at Education Dive.