State educational data from 2022 showed mixed results for Vermont schools, with few gains in standardized test scores but improvements in discipline and educational opportunities.

Troublingly, however, the data also showed a widening performance gap between historically marginalized students and their classmates.

Those findings come from the state Agency of Education’s “Annual Snapshot,” a visualization of test scores and other quantitative data. The agency released the latest snapshot Friday.

Vermont students’ standardized test scores showed little improvement in 2022,  following a dip between 2019 and 2021. The new test score data shows that Vermont students’ academic proficiency has improved little, if at all, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

By and large, student test scores for most subjects and grade levels stayed steady or fell, although scores did improve in some subjects.

The data comes as schools and students continue to grapple with fallout from the pandemic.

Administering the 2022 standardized test was “smoother” than the prior year, the education agency said in a press release Friday, but was still fraught with difficulties related to the pandemic. Staffing shortages at some schools made it difficult to administer the tests, and teachers “were also faced with the need to balance academic assessment with students’ social emotional well-being,” according to the press release.

Because of those issues — and because the tests were not administered in 2020 — the scores are difficult to interpret, according to Lindsey Hedges, a spokesperson for the agency.

“However, we can see that the effects of learning loss due to COVID-19 are still … present in the 2022 data,” Hedges said in an email.

Vermont students are tested in English and math every year from grade 3 to 9. The English tests include sections in reading, writing, listening, speaking and “research/inquiry,” according to the press release. The math test includes questions on problem solving, data analysis, mathematical concepts and procedures and other topics.

Students also take science tests in grades 5, 8 and 11.

In all three subjects, Vermont students were classified as “approaching” proficiency, according to the snapshot.

In science and English, students’ test scores declined between 2019 and 2022, the data showed. In math, however, 2022 test scores indicated improvement over 2019 scores.

Overall, the snapshot characterized Vermont’s academic performance as “not improving.”

In other areas, the snapshot provided something of a mixed report card for Vermont schools, such as the graduation rate (meeting the standard, but decreasing) and “college and career readiness” (approaching standards).  

The state’s schools were exceeding standards — and improving — when it came to how well students could personalize their educational experiences.

That metric ranks the extent to which Vermont students are given “authentic engagement and opportunities to shape their own learning,” and includes data from the state’s flexible pathways programs: early college, dual enrollment and work-based learning.

Similarly, the state was doing well in providing “safe, healthy schools,” according to data showing discipline-related suspensions. Vermont schools were also meeting standards for staffing and student-staff ratios. Scores in those areas, however, had declined between 2019 and 2022.

Most concerning, perhaps, was the state’s “equity index.” That metric tracks the difference in performance between historically marginalized students and their counterparts in academics, enrollment in flexible pathways programs and disciplinary actions.

In all three areas, the state’s equity index showed decreasing scores compared to previous years.

“The drop in the equity indices suggests that the effects of COVID-19 were not felt equally by all students and schools, but that instead, students in historically marginalized groups suffered disproportionately,” Hedges, the agency spokesperson, said in an email.