# In wake of pandemic, Mass. achievement gap has widened May 24, 2024 While students across the country continue to struggle to make up the learning loss from the pandemic, with many states seeing the gulf separating the achievement of poor and non-poor students growing larger, a study led by researchers at Harvard and Stanford universities says Massachusetts has the seen the largest widening of that gap of any the states they examined. Massachusetts students lost the equivalent of about two-thirds of a typical year of math learning and two-fifths of a year in reading from 2019 to 2022, according to [the report](https://educationrecoveryscorecard.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/ERS-Report-Final-1.31.pdf) from the Center for Education Research Policy at Harvard and the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford. Many of the state’s Gateway Cities, home to lots of the state’s poorer students, saw declines of as much as a full year of learning. While many districts began to see achievement gains from 2022 to 2023 – the first full year when students returned to in-person learning – many Gateway Cities saw achievement levels continue to drop, making the achievement gap even larger now than it was before the pandemic. “No one in Massachusetts wants to leave poor kids footing the bill for the pandemic, but that is the path we are on,” said Thomas Kane, faculty director of Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research and one of the study’s co-authors. The gap within Massachusetts between poor and non-poor students is now roughly half a grade wider than it was in 2019, according to the analysis of achievement trends across 15 states, a finding that shows just how much harder the school disruption hit lower-income students here – and how uneven the recovery from it has been. Five of the 15 states actually recorded a narrowing of the poor/non-poor gap in one or both subjects. Kane says without focused effort by districts and the state to address the growing achievement gap, research suggests poor students in Massachusetts will face setbacks tied to the pandemic that extend into adulthood, affecting everything from lifetime earnings to incarceration rates. Many districts with lots of students from higher-income households began to see achievement start to bounce back between 2022 to 2023, following large drops during the pandemic. In Longmeadow, for example, a well-off suburb of Springfield, proficiency rates for grade 3-8 reading went from 61 percent in 2022 to 64 percent in 2023 and in math rose from 58 percent to 65 percent. In many districts with large populations of low-income students, however, it’s been a very different story. Continue reading at See also:- [ COVID-19 Impact ](/focus-areas/covid-19-impact) - [ In the News ](/cepr-in-the-news) - [ 2024 ](/year/2024) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)