The COVID-19 pandemic devastated poor children’s well-being, not just by closing their schools, but also by taking away their parents’ jobs, sickening their families and teachers, and adding chaos and fear to their daily lives.
The scale of the disruption to American education is evident in a district-by-district analysis of test scores. The data provide the most comprehensive look yet at how much schoolchildren have fallen behind academically.
The analysis found the average student lost more than half a school year of learning in math and nearly a quarter of a school year in reading — with some district averages slipping by more than double those amounts, or worse.
While the picture was not as bleak in California, here, too, there was delayed or lost learning. In Los Angeles Unified — the nation’s second largest school district — the loss in math translates to about half a year in learning. In reading, however, test scores held fairly steady — working out to a loss of a little more than a week in learning.
The release of the data was the latest in a busy week for test scores, with results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress as well as from California’s own state testing program. The national assessment allows for a rough state-by-state comparison using a relatively small sample of fourth and eighth grade students. The state tests offer a more comprehensive look within California — because the state attempts to test all students in Grades 3 through 8 as well as in Grade 11.
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