#  Closing the Gap 

 





January 31, 2024

 

 

 *Expiring federal funds can address pandemic learning losses.*

 WHILE MUCH of the country struggles to recover from learning losses wrought by the pandemic, Alabama seems to be doing relatively well: it’s the sole state in the nation to have returned to pre-pandemic achievement levels in math, according to a report released today by the Education Recovery Scorecard, a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard and the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford.

 But the state’s overall recovery hides disparities. Many of Alabama’s poorest districts continue to lag behind 2019 levels of achievement; the gains of other districts have simply offset those losses. In Montgomery County—where 32.1 percent of children live in poverty, compared to a statewide rate of 26 percent—students remain half a grade level behind compared to their pre-pandemic performance.

 Nationwide efforts to address learning loss are failing to close achievement gaps that the pandemic exacerbated, the report found, and students in poor districts across the country are struggling to catch up. American students have made up for only one-third of pandemic losses in math and one-quarter of losses in reading, the report highlighted.

 To address these challenges, researchers have provided recommendations for districts to strategically utilize $51 billion of federal funding set to expire in September. The actions schools take—or don’t—in the next eight months could reverberate far into the future, said Gale professor of education Thomas Kane, who coauthored the study. “If we don’t help students catch up, this is going to have long-term consequences for inequality in college \[attendance\], inequality in earnings,” he said. “People have been concerned about economic mobility….One of the most concrete things we can do to improve economic mobility is to close these gaps.”

 Previous research by the Education Recovery Scorecard found that the pandemic widened long-standing achievement gaps between students from different racial and economic groups. The new report found that educational recovery in many states is being led by the wealthiest districts that lost the least amount of ground in the first place. In Massachusetts, achievement gaps between white and black students, white and Hispanic students, and low- and high-income students have all increased between 2019 and 2023.

 Continue reading at [harvardmagazine.com.](https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/01/federal-funding-to-reduce-pandemic-learning-loss-economic-disparities)



 

 

 



 

 See also:- [ COVID-19 Impact ](/focus-areas/covid-19-impact)
- [ In the News ](/cepr-in-the-news)
- [ 2024 ](/year/2024)
 
 

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