Many bad things happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of them was that elementary and middle school students fell behind in math and reading.
A group from Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research and Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project worked together to write the study. For the study, they looked at the first year of tests in 30 school districts across 30 states, from spring 2022 to spring 2023.
The study found that kids could only make up about a third of the math and reading skills they lost during the pandemic.
“Both of those gains were big by historical standards,” said Dr. Thomas Kane, co-author of the report and faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research. “But the gains in average achievement are hiding the dramatic widening in achievement between 2019 and 2022, and just the failure of many of the high poverty districts to catch up.”
Based on the reports, it will take about a year for kids to catch up in math and two years for them to catch up in reading. Reading skills are one-third of a level behind in 14 states.
Reports showed that kids from wealthier families did better on tests. This is because many families hired private teachers to keep their kids on track during the pandemic. Not as many rich families could pay for a tutor to help their kids during the pandemic, so their kids got lower grades.
Researchers told school districts that they should tell the parents of kids who aren’t meeting standards that they need to help their child do better. They also told these parents that their kids should go to summer school or learn more during the summer if their school didn’t offer it, so they could catch up on their schoolwork. They also say that schools should help kids by giving them training or programs after school.
