People released amid the pandemic were 56 percent less likely to test into high school courses

Education course participation rates by release year

Source: Author calculation from CDCR administrative data.
NOTES: 244,717 reading scores at initial assessment. Adult basic education (ABE) programs map onto primary school grade levels: ABE I spans kindergarten through third grade; ABE II fourth through sixth grade; and ABE III covers seventh and eighth grades. We exclude TABE assessments where a person scored zero in all modules (reading, math, and total battery), as this may reflect unadministered tests, not actual zero scores. In the case that a person was released more than once in a year, we use scores from their first release that year.