A recent study published on Tuesday dispels expectations that students would pick up learning more quickly to make up for learning loss experienced during COVID and reveals that academic development is significantly slower now than it was prior to the pandemic.
A new study from NWEA, a research group that develops widely used academic exams, found that kids in fourth through eighth grade made less academic gains in reading and arithmetic in 2022 than they had in pre-pandemic years.
nearly 6.7 million third through eighth graders in nearly 20,000 public schools nationally participated in the NWEA analysis of the assessment findings. When compared to the normal progress rate prior to COVID, they calculated the change in test scores between last fall and this spring.
With 4% in reading and 2% in math, third graders were the only cohort to demonstrate more advances in reading and math than before the pandemic.
Students in the fourth and fifth grades made less progress. The reading and math advances of fourth graders also decreased by 7% and 1%, respectively. The reading advances of fifth graders decreased by 8%, and their math gains fell by 15%.
Children in grades six through eight have the most difficulty advancing. The reading performance of sixth graders was the poorest, with a 19% decline in reading advances and a 6% decline in math gains. The reading and math progress of seventh graders fell by 16% and 10%, respectively.
Eighth graders performed poorly in reading as well, with reading advances falling by 18% and math gains falling by 7%.
After the government closed schools and students had trouble adjusting to distance learning, the study found that “significant achievement gaps persist” at the end of this school year.
“The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to reverberate through the American school system three years after the COVID-19 virus closed the vast majority of public schools in spring 2020,” the study said.
“We are actually seeing evidence of backsliding,” said Karyn Lewis, one of the study’s lead researchers.
“This isn’t news anybody wanted to hear,” she said.
According to the study, students would require an additional four and a half months of math teaching and slightly more than four months of reading instruction to catch up to the normal pre-COVID student.
It was also discovered that kids of color made less improvement than pupils of other races overall in terms of achievement gains.
Despite starting at a lower level in both math and reading than Hispanic kids, black pupils made the most slowly progressing advances in those disciplines. Asian students made the least amount of progress in both courses and continued to perform significantly better than White students, whose progress slowed to levels near the national average.
The study authors warned:
“The scale of the crisis and its repercussions on students’ academic progress surpass what can be fully addressed with the current response.”
“While schools are taking steps in the right direction, the reality is that the depth and breadth of the crisis demands an even more comprehensive, intensive, and sustainable approach if we are to truly mitigate the long-lasting impacts of the pandemic on students,” the study authors said.
Despite the federal government spending billions of dollars on pandemic recovery for schools, largely to assist children in making up for learning lost, the poor academic progress persists.
