The company aggregates data from more than 7 million students in 20,000 K-8 public schools nationwide, according to a recent news release.
NWEA’s visual data tool gives districts and states more information to guide decision-making, particularly regarding post-pandemic-era learning deficits. It arrives following the Trump administration’s disbandment of the Institute of Education Sciences, a division of the U.S. Department of Education that collected, analyzed and published federal student achievement data.
“One of the biggest lessons from navigating the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic is how essential reliable, timely student data are for driving strategic action about student learning,” Karyn Lewis, NWEA vice president of research and policy partnerships, said. “Academic recovery has been slower and more uneven than expected, and research funding is increasingly constrained. Schools need evidence-based insights to make decisions through this complex landscape.”
NWEA collects data through internal assessments called the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) Growth tests. The computerized, adaptive assessments are designed to gauge student performance in subjects like reading, language arts and math. According to the release, MAP tests help educators personalize instruction and track student growth over time.
Unlike the Nation’s Report Card (NAEP), which is published every two years, NWEA’s national dashboard will update its report three times per school year, immediately following testing sessions in the fall, winter and spring, the release said. After each seasonal update, NWEA stated they plan to provide a Trend Snapshots report, which will highlight observations in the data and offer insights to school-based professionals.
“The past five years have been marked by disruption and slower than expected academic recovery,” Megan Kuhfeld, NWEA’s director of growth modeling and data analytics, said. “Given the unevenness of recovery, even within schools and classrooms, national trends like these are an important first step to understanding where to dig deeper at the local level and ask critical questions about the necessary support and resources that are specific to the individual needs of each student.”
NWEA FINDINGS FROM 2024-2025 SCHOOL YEAR
National assessment data from NWEA shows that while U.S. students are slowly regaining ground in math, reading performance has largely stagnated since the pandemic.
Drawing from a sample of roughly 7 million students across 20,000 public schools, NWEA’s Spring 2025 Trend Snapshots report found continued progress in math and little movement in reading compared with pre-pandemic achievement levels, according to data aggregated through NWEA’s MAP Growth assessments.
The data also show that math scores have risen steadily since hitting their lowest point in 2021, though not yet returning to 2019 benchmarks. Elementary grades, in particular, have driven much of that progress. NWEA’s analysis also highlights that achievement gaps between high- and low-poverty schools are narrowing.
However, the report shows that reading trends remain largely unchanged. NWEA’s data indicate that no major student subgroup has shown significant recovery, with scores flat across race, ethnicity and income.
“No subgroup shows evidence of strong rebound in reading, and stagnation is evident regardless of race/ethnicity or school poverty level,” the report said.
By combining large-scale assessment data with interactive visualization tools, NWEA is positioning its platform as a near-real-time barometer of student progress nationwide. The findings underscore both the power of education data systems to guide decision-making and the urgency of translating those insights into targeted supports for students who remain behind.
