{"id":499313,"date":"2026-10-17T14:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T14:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/499313\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T14:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T14:22:08","slug":"sacramento-schools-test-scores-still-below-pre-pandemic-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/499313\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacramento schools test scores still below pre-pandemic levels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SAC_6271_ZJZ_20260806_WindingCreekElementary.JPG\"   width=\"1200\" height=\"674\" title=\"A student walks to a classroom during Winding Creek Elementary's opening day in Roseville in August.\" alt=\"A student walks to a classroom during Winding Creek Elementary's opening day in Roseville in August.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>        A student walks to a classroom during Winding Creek Elementary&#8217;s opening day in Roseville in August.<\/p>\n<p>                ZIYU JULIAN ZHU<\/p>\n<p>            Sacramento Bee file<\/p>\n<p>English and math scores in the Sacramento area\u2019s largest school districts, as in California overall, have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, according to results released this week.<\/p>\n<p>California Gov. Gavin Newsom touted student academic progress during the 2025-26 school year Thursday, citing gains in test scores. But the figures his office cited include students who had not reached the proficient or advanced levels, meaning they had not yet met grade-level standards.<\/p>\n<p>Fewer than half of students met or exceeded state standards in English language arts and math, and many Sacramento-area schools were no exception.<\/p>\n<p>Megan Welsh, an associate professor at UC Davis\u2019 School of Education, said that it was not surprising that students affected by the pandemic were still struggling, given the time they lost in school.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t take away a year of people\u2019s development and expect them to not be permanently altered by that,\u201d Welsh said, while also noting cutoffs between proficiency levels are somewhat arbitrary and don\u2019t account for the margin of error in individual students\u2019 test scores.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe people involved in the decision making might wiggle the score a little bit to change the results, so that it doesn\u2019t look so good or so bad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Student test scores in the largest Sacramento-region school districts generally show a similar pattern of modest gains the recent years, but achievement levels in most cases are below the pre-pandemic scores of 2018-19.<\/p>\n<p>In the Sacramento region\u2019s six largest districts, only in Folsom Cordova Unified were more than half of the students able demonstrate grade-level proficiency in English skills. None of the six districts were able to meet that threshold in math.<\/p>\n<p>        Related Stories from  Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n<p>                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/profile\/312221354\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n                        <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"author-thumb\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792246928_453_Chaewon-Chung.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" alt=\"Profile Image of Chaewon Chung\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><br \/>\n                    <\/a><\/p>\n<p>                <a class=\"author-name\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/profile\/312221354\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chaewon Chung<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                    The Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n<p>            Chaewon Chung is an education reporter for The Sacramento Bee. She has previously covered climate and environmental issues, focusing on energy and water. Before joining The Bee, she worked as a climate and environment reporter at the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina.\n            <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A student walks to a classroom during Winding Creek Elementary&#8217;s opening day in Roseville in August. ZIYU JULIAN&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-499313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}