Lewis sees the data as a sign of hope for that group of younger students, whom researchers initially anticipated would have the toughest time recovering from the pandemic’s disruption to schools.
Schools and districts apparently kept that in mind when planning their learning recovery strategies.
“It was the group we were most worried about, and rightly so because our research and that of our colleagues have shown that that was the group that was hardest hit,” Lewis said. “I think this is probably due, in part, to that message getting out, and schools and districts taking a triage approach, focusing energy on our youngest learners.”
NWEA now anticipates that elementary school students, on average, will fully recover from pandemic learning loss in three or more years. Older students are expected to recover in five or more years.
When the pandemic was raging in the fall of 2020, hundreds of thousands of families across the country opted not to enroll their children in public school, with the biggest groups being kindergartners, and students in grades one through three. Researchers, at the time, were concerned that those students would struggle most to adapt when returning to school.
California K-12 schools lost 271,000 students since COVID struck in spring 2020. Enrollment as of Census Day, always the first Wednesday of October, was 5.89 million students for the 2021-22 school year; five years ago, it was 6.23 million.
Learning loss also was a top concern of policymakers, which is why billions in federal American Rescue Plan funds have been earmarked specifically for schools to address the issue.
Lewis found that the range of abilities among students in the same grade had widened in the 2021-22 school year. Lewis attributed that to the pandemic’s uneven impact on students and said the spread was more dramatic among elementary school students.
“Kids may be coming to the classroom at the same age, but they are not all stepping into the classroom with the same levels of preparation and readiness to take on grade-level content,” Lewis said.
That range of abilities will make teachers’ jobs “exponentially harder” than before, Lewis said.
Students across all grades had bigger gains in math than reading, according to the study. Prior research indicated that the pandemic has had larger negative impacts on math achievement compared with reading achievement.