The Pandemic Is Over, But the Education Emergency Continues
America’s COVID-19 public health emergency officially ended on May 11, thanks to bipartisan legislation signed by President Joe Biden. But the Education Recovery Scorecard reminds us that America’s K-8 students still face a national COVID-19 education emergency.
The Scorecard is the most thorough research to date on the pandemic’s effects on students in grades 3 to 8 and provides three insights into this calamity:
- There is a divide between the reality of student learning loss and parents’ perceptions of learning loss
- Learning loss is related not only to what happened in schools but also to what happened in communities
- Learning loss will become permanent unless learning time—student time on task—is increased
The Scorecard analyzed information across 41 states and 7,800 communities that enroll around 26 million students in more than 53,000 K-8 public schools, roughly 80% of K-8 students.
This information included school and non-school factors before and during the pandemic, including test scores, length of school closures, how instruction was delivered when schools closed, COVID deaths in a community, broadband availability, Facebook data on family activities and mental health, and disruptions to daily routines.
Learning loss and parent perceptions: Learning loss was measured by comparing student test scores during the pandemic from 2019 to 2022 to same grade level students beginning in 2016. This analysis showed how far student learning fell short of where it would be without the pandemic. Nearly all students experienced pandemic learning loss. By spring 2022, average student learning loss was half a year in math and a third of a year in reading. Greater learning loss occurred in high poverty and high minority school districts and in districts using remote and hybrid learning.
Parents’ perceptions of what children are learning after returning to school do not mirror this learning loss reality. “Parents are less worried about their children’s academic progress, despite data showing significant learning loss,” the authors of a Parent Perception Barometer created by Bellwether Education Partners wrote. For example, the share of parents who think children are learning “somewhat” or “a lot less” from the pandemic dropped by half between 2020 (60%) and 2022 (30%).
Learning loss and community effects: The degree of learning loss was larger between school districts than within a typical district where that loss was “evenly distributed” among students whether they were rich, poor, white, Black, or Hispanic. This means that where students lived was significant in determining how much learning loss they experienced rather than factors like family background, income, or internet speed. And “the more curtailed normal life was in a community, the larger the losses,” the researchers wrote.
For example, learning loss was greater where COVID death rates were high, adults reported greater levels of anxiety and depression, and daily routines were severely disrupted. Less learning loss occurred in communities with fewer personal strains on parents, teachers, and social restrictions. The Scorecard analysis found that these communities had higher levels of institutional trust which fosters cooperation and confidence in public, private, and civic institutions.
Remedies for learning loss: The researchers examined data before the pandemic to see how other students recovered from significant school disruptions like severe flu seasons or too many snow days. Typically, students did not bounce back, recovering only up to 30% of learning loss. Therefore, school districts should add more instruction time for students to catch up. This can be done in two ways.
First, districts should make better use of current student instructional time. For example, typical classroom disruptions like intercom announcements, staff visits, and student disruptions can use ten to twenty days of instructional time over a school year.
Second, districts and community groups should offer tutoring during or after school and over the summer paid for by using their $190 billion in federal pandemic school recovery dollars. One way to do this is high-dosage tutoring—one-on-one or small group tutoring that meets at least three times a week or has week-long sessions over a multi-week period. This approach, on average, has positive learning effects that are among the largest learning interventions in education.
Without such approaches, “the sharp increase in inequality that occurred during the pandemic will become permanent,” the Scorecard authors wrote.
The pandemic’s educational calamity continues to afflict America’s young people, though the magnitude of learning loss is not obvious to families. Neither is the importance of remedies like more learning time.
Solutions to these problems are not only the school district’s responsibility but should include local partners because increasing community-wide institutional trust is key to a lasting solution.
Community leaders, advocates, employers, and other partners must mobilize a recovery effort worthy of our young people or face the consequences of a generation of young people not being given the opportunity to reach their potential.
