# The K-12 Pandemic Disruption: Five Years And Counting March 18, 2025 *The Learning Loss Calamity Is Still With Us* The month of March marks the five-year anniversary of the event that forever changed U.S. K-12 public education: the COVID-19 pandemic. The immediate effect of the President’s COVID-19 emergency declaration was that public schools closed their doors and went into lockdown mode. This lockdown produced long-term consequences for K-12 education. One of these consequences is how dissatisfied Americans are today with public education. From 2019 to 2025, Gallup’s annual public satisfaction [survey](https://news.gallup.com/poll/656114/americans-state-nation-ratings-remain-record-low.aspx) shows that the percentage of adults who report feeling dissatisfied with K-12 public education increased from 62% to 73%, with those who felt satisfied at the lowest [level](https://www.edweek.org/leadership/americans-satisfaction-with-public-schools-hits-24-year-low/2025/02) since 2001. Another consequence is the learning loss disaster COVID-19 produced for our nation’s young people, especially the most vulnerable. (There also are other negative pandemic-related social and emotional consequences that befall young people.) To be fair, some of the pandemic’s distressing effects result from school closures, while others predate the pandemic but were made worse by it. Recent updates on student test scores make the general point about the learning loss tragedy that K-12 students experienced. But some of this analysis also hints at the direction K-12 schools need to take to overcome the pandemic calamity. ## What Does The Evidence Say? The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also called the Nation’s Report Card, paints a gloomy picture in its January 2024 [report](https://www.nagb.gov/powered-by-naep/the-2024-nations-report-card.html) on what our young people know and are able to do. Reading scores are down nationally in grades 4 and 8, with no state posting gains in either grade compared to 2022. A third (33%) of grade 8 students are not even reading at the NAEP [Basic Level](https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/guides/scores_achv.aspx), a greater percentage than ever. This means that they typically cannot identify basic elements in a text, like the order of events, character traits, and main idea. Grade 4 math scores are up nationally by 2 points. While this is promising, middle- and higher-performing students have driven the progress. Scores for lower-performing students were flat. Grade 8 math scores are flat nationally, which is a concern given the historic 8-point drop for grade 8 students in 2022. Unfortunately, that situation masks higher-performing students’ gains in 2024 and lower-performing students’ declines. Overall, national scores are below pre-pandemic 2019 levels in all tested grades and subjects. Higher-performing students were responsible for much of the progress made in 2024. Gaps are growing between higher-performing and lower-performing students, a trend underway [for more than a decade](https://www.nagb.gov/content/dam/nagb/en/documents/naep/NAEP-Divergent-Trend-Brief.pdf). Finally, on a 500-point scale, the lowest-performing students generally score about 100 points below the highest-performing students. “The results are horrifying. Student achievement is in free fall,” [write](https://www.the74million.org/article/the-pandemic-was-a-sputnik-moment-for-rethinking-american-education-we-blew-it/) Robin Lake and Paul Hill from the Center for Reinventing Public Education in *The 74*. Another analysis of NAEP data by the [Urban Institute](https://www.urban.org/research/publication/states-demographically-adjusted-performance-2024-national-assessment) had subtle but important positive news. This analysis uses statistical controls to account for the different student populations in each state, unlike NAEP, which uses raw or statistically unweighted scores. For example, the Urban Institute report takes into account that child poverty rates are higher below the Mason-Dixon line than above it. The effect of this adjusted demographic analysis is to show how states like Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas rise to the top of NAEP rankings. “The South surges academically,” [writes](https://www.the74million.org/article/the-south-surges-academically-in-alternative-view-of-national-exam/) Kevin Mahnken in *The 74*. A third analysis is from the [Education Recovery Scorecard](/education-recovery-scorecard), a collaborative project of the Harvard University Center for Education Policy Research and the Stanford University Educational Opportunity Project. This analysis provides a view of academic recovery in 8,719 school districts with either math or reading achievement data from 43 states, tracking district-level changes in achievement for communities from 2019 to 2024. *Continue reading at [www.forbes.com](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brunomanno/2025/03/18/the-k-12-pandemic-disruption-five-years-and-counting/)* See also:- [ COVID-19 Impact ](/focus-areas/covid-19-impact) - [ In the News ](/cepr-in-the-news) - [ Education Recovery Scorecard ](/projects/education-recovery-scorecard) - [ 2025 ](/year/2025) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)