PRESS RELEASE
May 13, 2026
Contact: Sam Stockwell
samuel_stockwell@gse.harvard.edu
617.495.0342
Delaware Ranks 4th in Math Recovery and 14th in Reading Among States
Despite strong recovery gains, students remain more than .8 grade equivalents below 2019 levels in both math and reading.
Chronic absenteeism has fallen sharply, but still slightly above pre-pandemic levels.
Districts like Brandywine and Appoquinimink are outperforming their peers in both math and reading.
(May 13, 2026) In its fourth year, the Education Scorecard (a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, and faculty at Dartmouth College) is issuing its annual report on district-level student growth in math and reading.
The latest report provides a high-resolution picture of where Delaware students’ academic recovery stands, combining state test results for roughly 35 million grade 3–8 students nationwide with national assessment data to describe changes in local communities. Here’s what we found:
Delaware:
- Delaware ranks 4th out of 38 states in academic growth in math and 14th out of 35 states in reading between 2022 and 2025.
- In math, the average student is performing .42 grade equivalents above their 2022 level, but almost .83 grade equivalents below 2019 levels. Still, some districts like Milford, Laurel, and Lake Forest continue to lag over a grade equivalent behind 2019 levels.
- In reading, the average student is performing .07 grade equivalents below their 2022 level, and .8 grade equivalents below 2019 levels. A number of districts like Capital, Caesar Rodney, and Indian River continue to slip and remain over a grade equivalent behind their 2019 levels.
- Several Delaware districts are emerging as Districts on the Rise. These districts have shown unusual progress relative to similar districts in their own state. A small group of districts is excelling in both math and reading, with districts like Brandywine and Appoquinimink school districts outperforming their peers.
- Other districts are rising relative to their peers in one subject, with Seaford and Woodbridge leading the way in math performance.
- Statewide, there is some good news on chronic absenteeism (students missing more than 10% of a school year), which has fallen from 24.7% in 2022 to 16.6% in 2025. However, chronic absence rates still remain around one percentage point above pre-pandemic levels.
- Delaware received about $637 million in federal pandemic relief for K–12 schools—roughly $4,500 per student. Our analysis finds that the gains in many high-poverty districts were driven by this federal support. Unfortunately, many middle-poverty districts (those with 30 to 70 percent of students receiving federal lunch subsidies) received little federal aid. Now that the federal relief is gone, Delaware should focus school improvement dollars on the middle and higher poverty districts that remain behind their pre-pandemic levels.
“The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement,” said Professor Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. “The ‘learning recession’ started a decade ago, after policymakers switched off the early warning system of test-based accountability and social media took over children’s lives. In this report, we highlight the work of a small group of state leaders who have started digging out by changing how students learn to read, and 108 local school districts that are finding ways to get students learning again. The recovery of U.S. education has begun. But it’s up to the rest of us to spread it.”
District on the Rise: Brandywine School District
Among Delaware’s Districts on the Rise in both math and reading, Brandywine School District stands out for a disciplined focus on curriculum quality, foundational literacy, and data-driven continuous improvement. In elementary math, the district transitioned from Eureka Math to Eureka Math Squared, investing in new manipulative kits and the Zearn platform for all teachers, while encouraging a deliberate move away from passive Chromebook-based learning toward number talks, collaborative problem-solving, and teacher-led whole-group and small-group instruction. At the middle school level, the district adopted Illustrative Math supported by sustained professional learning, and invested in OGAP (Ongoing Assessment Project) training to deepen teachers’ understanding of mathematical reasoning across grade levels. In literacy, the district implemented science-of-reading-aligned practices in grades K–2 with explicit phonics instruction, academic vocabulary development, and early intervention—with leaders noting that instructional improvements at the earliest grades are designed to create growth trends that extend through middle school. Professional learning communities focused on lesson internalization anchored in grade-level standards, collaborative planning, and instructional refinement, supported by content-specific instructional coaching across subjects. On attendance, Brandywine launched a districtwide initiative to increase family awareness of consistent attendance, built dashboards and monitoring systems for regular school-level trend review, and developed proactive Attendance Action Plans with MTSS teams. Throughout, the district emphasized measuring student growth over time rather than binary proficiency benchmarks, intentionally discouraging narrow focus on “bubble students” in favor of growth-based indicators that better capture academic progress across all learners. For the full case study, click here.
