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When COVID-19 wrought havoc on society in early 2020, today’s youngest schoolchildren were infants or yet to be born. Now in their early school years, researchers are beginning to see how the pandemic years have shaped their education, even though many had yet to set foot in a classroom when it began.
First- and second-graders continue to perform worse than their pre-pandemic counterparts on math and reading tests, according to a report published by the education assessment and research group NWEA. But while math scores have inched up every year, reading scores remain stagnant, the report shows. The data suggest the slump in academic performance is not rooted only in instructional disruption. Broader societal shifts might be at play.
In the youngest students’ failure to recover, “there’s something kind of systemic here happening … within schools and outside of schools,” said Megan Kuhfeld, a researcher at NWEA. “We can’t pinpoint one specific cause.”
The pandemic’s effects on older children’s academic achievement are well-documented. COVID-19 forced kids out of classrooms and into online learning. Students lost out on face time with instructors, their mental health suffered in the isolation, and their well-being deteriorated as some families endured hardship. Some schoolchildren stopped showing up to school altogether.
The federal government gave billions of dollars to school districts to help students catch up—with mixed results. In 2024, reading scores for fourth- and eighth-graders continued a downward slide, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Math scores, however, trended upward.
Testing for younger kids is less common, so the NWEA report offers insights into the depth of the academic disruption. It’s based on assessments given to students in the 2024–25 school year.
Kindergarten scores for math and science remained roughly the same throughout the pandemic. First- and second-graders are trending in the same way as their older peers. Math and reading scores are still falling short of pre-pandemic levels, although math scores are slowly rising. Reading scores have remained roughly the same since the spring of 2021, when the first full school year in the pandemic was wrapping up.
This article was provided by The Associated Press.