Research Question

My research question: Were average NAEP scores in mathematics and reading (grades 4 and 8) lower after COVID than before COVID?

This is a descriptive question. It asks whether something happened — whether scores fell — not why it happened or what caused it. That distinction matters, because every claim in this project is deliberately limited to what the data can actually support.

Why this question matters

Test scores are the most visible public signal of how students are doing academically. If scores fell after COVID and stayed down, that tells educators, school leaders, families, and policymakers whether students are actually learning less than before — and where recovery is or is not happening. The answer matters most for the students who lost the most ground.

How I got here

I began this course by exploring five candidate questions about NAEP data, spanning predictive, causal, and descriptive aims. I narrowed to this one because it is the simplest, most answerable question the dataset can honestly support — and because the answer turns out to be both clear and important. A descriptive question, answered carefully, can still change how people think about a problem.

What this project does not do

This project documents that scores changed over time. It does not try to prove what caused the change. See the limitations section for the full claim ladder.