Our Projects
Allentown School District
The Challenge
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Allentown School District (ASD) — a large urban district in Pennsylvania — sought to understand how its students were affected academically. District leaders needed a rigorous analysis of the pandemic’s impact on student learning across grade levels, subjects, and student populations, and they needed insights that could directly inform decisions about staffing, interventions, and resource allocation in the school year ahead.
Our Support
Gibson partnered with ASD to conduct a rigorous, data-driven analysis of pandemic-related learning loss and growth patterns. Key components of the project included:
Application of propensity score methods to isolate the effect of pandemic disruptions on student academic growth;
Analysis of longitudinal data across schools, student groups, and content areas to identify variations in impact;
Development of an interactive data dashboard to allow district and school leaders to explore results by campus, grade, subject, and student characteristics;
Ongoing consultation with district leadership to translate findings into actionable planning decisions.
By combining methodological rigor with accessible tools, Gibson ensured that the analysis wasn’t just technically sound — it was useful for real-world planning.
Results
The data dashboards provided ASD with:
A clear picture of how and where academic growth had stalled or declined during the pandemic;
Actionable data to support equitable resource allocation, such as where to direct instructional supports and recovery funding;
A dashboard tool enabling district leaders to revisit and explore the data throughout the planning cycle;
A foundation for data-informed school reopening and recovery strategies, tailored to the needs of specific student populations and content areas.
The insights produced by Gibson’s team became a vital input into the district’s strategic response to COVID-era disruptions.