Five years ago, I was a senior at Bates College spending almost all of my free time trying to finish up my economics thesis. My concerns at that time were 1: Graduating, 2: Thinking about grad school, and nothing else. Less than a month later, I had flown back to Minnesota and the only thing I was worried about was COVID-19.
I did still end up finishing my thesis and going to grad school, but like so many other things during those early years of the pandemic, I had to be entirely remote while they happened.
I’m someone who works well independently and is extremely comfortable with computers, so this adjustment was not as hard for me as I’m sure it was for others. Despite this, I struggled mightily in that first semester of grad school. I had to completely overhaul all of the systems I was familiar with to make my education successful. I would say that switching to remote education had an impact on the quality of my learning.
For many students, the shock of the pandemic was much more difficult to adapt to. Some students might not have had the high-speed internet access needed to participate in a remote classroom. Some students might not have had computers at all.
Add on to that the missing social element of schools and the general stress and anxiety caused by the worst global pandemic in over a century and it should not be surprising that there was a significant decrease in standardized test scores across the country.
Researchers Tom Kane and Sean Reardon started the Education Recovery Scorecard to track these learning losses. They found that between 2019 and 2022, the average third through eighth grader lost roughly half of a grade level of math achievement and one third of a grade level of reading achievement. These losses were more pronounced in lower-income and urban school districts.
This is something Scioto Analysis has covered in the past. Our 2020 cost-benefit analysis on the subject found that the risk of death reduction from school closures was less valuable than the damage done to students’ academic performance (and we even got some attention for this study in the Wall Street Journal).
Unfortunately, conditions have not been improving. In their most recent report, they found that the average student is even farther behind in reading than they were in 2022, now about half a grade level behind.
As was the case in 2022, these results are not uniform. Some school districts have recovered to pre-pandemic levels of achievement. Districts in the highest income decile were four times as likely to have recovered as districts in the bottom income decile, again highlighting how important income is to school achievement.
One problem preventing recovery efforts is chronic absenteeism. Although data on absenteeism is not super robust, researchers have found that absenteeism rates are higher post-pandemic than they were pre-pandemic. Absenteeism rates can exacerbate disparities as well: lower income school districts have higher rates of absenteeism compared to high income districts.
These researchers also explain how federal relief dollars have impacted education recovery efforts. Districts that spent more money on academic catch-up programs (e.g. tutoring, summer school, etc.) have seen faster recovery rates compared to districts that spent less.
Kane and Reardon make a point to highlight the policy implications of their research. They’ve identified a problem: student achievement has not recovered from the pandemic, and they are looking at some of the reasons why so we can start to address them.
They mention on their website that despite the evidence that the average student is not achieving at what we expect for their grade level, 90% of parents think their child is at or above grade level. Policymakers and analysts need research like this to understand why students are underperforming, and to find solutions to help get children back on track.