(NEXSTAR) — The COVID-19 pandemic had a lasting impact on education in the United States, bringing discussions of extending the traditional school year to the forefront.When schools shut down and went remote, students fell behind. The learning those students lost, as a result, will need to be made up to avoid a ripple effect down the line.
Tom Kane, Faculty Director of the Center of Education Policy Research at Harvard University, helped develop the Education Recovery Scorecard, which tracks the amount of learning loss from reporting districts in the United States. According to the scorecard, the average student lost the equivalent of a half-year in subjects like math.
“It’s important to point out that it’s not that students forgot knowledge that they had gained, it’s that they didn’t do the learning that they normally would have been doing. Especially during the 2021 school year,” Kane said. “So when I say half-a-year’s worth of loss, I’m referring to the typical gains students make on the national assessment of educational progress, which is something that is administered every couple of years.”
Kane referred to the learning loss caused by the pandemic as a band of tornadoes running across the country. Some districts were affected more than others, even neighboring districts.
He said there is evidence that districts that spent more time shut down, in remote learning, or were in communities that saw high COVID death rates, saw more learning loss than others.
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