MOUNT VERNON — The Education Scorecard has recognized Mount Vernon City Schools, as well as 107 other school districts, as outstanding amongst its peers.
The Education Scorecard is in its fourth year. Researchers from Harvard University, Stanford University and Dartmouth College conduct this annual study to analyze reading and math achievement in grades 3-8 throughout the U.S.
This year, Mount Vernon City Schools was recognized as a “district on the rise” for its accelerated achievements. MVCS Supt. Bill Seder spoke about what this means for the district.
“Like a lot of districts, math and ELA (English Language Arts) have been targeted focuses for most districts, especially coming out of the pandemic. There certainly was some concerns with regard to what type of deficits we might see coming out in those core areas of ELA and math,” Seder said.
Achievement was on the decline before COVID-19
(The information in this section is drawn from the Education Scorecard study, included below.)
Student math and reading progress first began to stall in 2013 and achievement remained at a steady decline until recently. Researchers with the Education Scorecard refer to this as a “learning recession.”
In 2022, however, math achievement began to improve, and in 2025 researchers started to see an improvement in literacy.
The Scorecard was created to draw attention to the issue, educate local communities and to recognize districts with accelerated recovery efforts, according to the website.
Districts on the rise have seen the effects of accelerated recovery, including at MVCS. However, this recovery has not been without work. Following the pandemic, the district began to see the decline, particularly in math.
“We brought in additional reading tutors and teachers … we’re just really blessed with amazing teachers who ran with it and are really working hard everyday for the betterment of our kids,” Seder said.
To qualify as “on the rise,” a district must “have experienced an increase in achievement of at least 0.3 grade levels in reading and math from 2022–2025 and 2019–2025.”
Mount Vernon students experienced a 0.74 increase in math achievement, and a 0.68 increase in reading achievement.
Despite the improvement, receiving the recognition was a shock.
“We’re humbled by it … we’re always striving to get better each and every day, but to see the fruits of that labor, and that work come together really makes us feel like we’re pointed in the right direction,” Seder said.
