Ventura County students saw little improvement in state test scores last spring, confirmation that schools still have work to do reversing the sizable drops they saw in 2022, the first year of post-COVID standardized testing. Countywide scores echoed trends across the state, with math scores ticking up slightly and English language arts scores staying flat. Those trajectories held true across most demographics, including low-income students and Black and Latino students, who continued to average lower scores than their counterparts. Before COVID-19 struck, changes in California’s test scores occurred slowly, a percentage point or two annually, education researcher Heather Hough told EdSource. Then, Hough said, came the "huge drop." “We can’t afford another 10- to 20-year period of slow incremental change, especially when what we know we’re facing is huge inequities in student achievement,” said Hough, director of the Stanford-based group Policy Analysis for California Education. “We have to keep that intensity that we have not fixed this problem, despite investments and despite good intentions.”