TDNet Discover

This quantitative, non-experimental comparative study examined differences in 8th-grade student achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) across three schools in a Florida district by comparing pre-pandemic (2019) and post-pandemic (2022) state assessment scores. Specifically, the study compared proficiency rates, defined as students scoring Level Three or above on the state ELA assessment. Archival data were obtained from the Florida Department of Education’s publicly available school-level reports. The independent variable was two traditional schools and one virtual school, and the dependent variable was student achievement level. Levene’s test assessed homogeneity of variances, followed by independent samples t-tests to evaluate mean differences, with Cohen’s d used to measure effect size. Results showed 398 students achieved proficiency in 2019 compared to 330 students in 2022, indicating an overall decline in performance. Outcomes were not uniform across schools: the virtual school experienced the steepest and most statistically significant declines, while traditional schools demonstrated relative stability. Although statistical significance was not consistently achieved, large effect sizes suggested meaningful learning loss. These findings highlighted the academic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and underscored the importance of identifying strategies to mitigate learning loss and support educational recovery in post-pandemic contexts.