Students in Virginia have experienced some of the nation’s worst learning loss since the start of the pandemic, according to new analysis shared exclusively with The Associated Press.
Stanford education professor Sean Reardon and Harvard economist Thomas Kane compiled and analyzed the data. They created a map showing how many years of learning the average student in each district has lost since 2019. Their project, the Education Recovery Scorecard, compared results from a test known as the “nation’s report card” with local standardized test scores for third through eighth-grade students from 29 states and Washington.
The data provide the most comprehensive look yet at how much schoolchildren have fallen behind academically.
Nationally, the analysis found the average student lost more than half a school year of learning in math, and nearly a quarter of a year in reading — with some district averages slipping by more than double those amounts, or worse. Online learning played a major role, but students lost significant ground even where they returned quickly to schools, especially for math scores in low-income communities.
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