Pandemic school closures upended U.S. education. Many students lost significant ground, and the federal government invested billions to help them recover. Now, new data offers the clearest portrait yet of how much students have gained back — and how far they still have to go.
Elementary and middle-school students have made up significant ground since pandemic school closings in 2020 — but they are nowhere close to being fully caught up, according to the first detailed national study of how much U.S. students are recovering.
Overall in math, a subject where learning loss has been greatest, students have made up about a third of what they lost. In reading, they have made up a quarter, according to the new analysis of standardized test score data led by researchers at Stanford and Harvard.
The findings suggest that the United States has averted a dire outcome — stagnating at pandemic lows — but that many students are not on pace to catch up before the expiration of a $122 billion federal aid package in September. That money — the single largest federal investment in public education in the country’s history — has paid for extra help, like tutoring and summer school, at schools nationwide.
Even with the federal funds, the gains were larger than researchers expected, based on prior research on extra money for schools. Recovery was not a given, judging from past unexpected school closures, like for natural disasters or teachers’ strikes.
Still, the gap between students from rich and poor communities — already huge before the pandemic — has widened.
“One of the big and surprising findings is there actually has been a substantial recovery,” said Sean F. Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford, who conducted the new analysis with Thomas J. Kane, an economist at Harvard; Erin Fahle, executive director of the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford; and Douglas O. Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth.
“But it’s an unevenly felt recovery,” Professor Reardon said, “so the worry there is that means inequality is getting baked in.”
Some children may never catch up and could enter adulthood without the full set of skills they need to succeed in the work force and life.
The students most at risk are those in poor districts, whose test scores fell further during the pandemic. Though the new data shows that they have begun to catch up, they had much more to make up than their peers from higher-income families, who are already closer to a recovery.
The result: Students in poor communities are at a greater disadvantage today than they were five years ago.
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