According to a recent survey of 26 million K-8 students by researchers at Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and Harvard, the “educational harm” caused by the coronavirus pandemic has been “devastating.” The researchers also found that the pandemic has “exacerbated economic and racial disparities in education,” as lead authors Tom Kane of Harvard and Sean Reardon of Stanford wrote in a New York Times essay accompanying the publication of their findings last week.

Standardized test scores also showed American students losing ground in math, reading, history and social studies. But the new findings, which are part of the Education Recovery Scorecard, add important — and worrisome — context, as well as a call for urgent action.

Top line

In a survey of 7,800 communities in 40 states and Washington, DC, Kane, Reardon and colleagues Found out that between 2019 and 2022, the average “US public school student in grades 3-8 lost the equivalent of half a year of math and a quarter of a year of reading.”

Long-standing educational disparities also played a role: the less wealthy and white a community was, the more likely it was to suffer losses from the pandemic. It means the so-called gap in education what politicians have been desperately trying to shut down is only getting wider.

Consequences of school closures

By the fall of 2020, it was clear that children were not contracting serious or fatal cases of COVID-19. Schools also did not become the sites of the massive outbreaks that some feared. However, in many districts, especially those controlled by Democrats, schools remained closed to in-person instruction until 2021.

By the end of 2022, researchers found that distance learning causes marked learning loss. In a summary of their findings, the authors of the Education Recovery Scorecard reinforce the evidence for this correlation.

“Counties that spent more time on distance learning in 2020-2021 suffered big losses,” they write.

The story goes on

And these losses, they found, were especially noticeable in communities where parents were employed in “essential” jobs that took them away from home. the result of labor obligations.

social capital

Kane, Reardon and their colleagues do not blame distance learning for all the learning losses they noted. Taking a more subtle stance, they argue that community-level factors also played a role.

In communities with higher COVID death rates, losses in math were more noticeable. Especially in the early stages of a pandemic. deaths were concentrated in communities of color with multi-generational households and limited access to green spaces.

Not surprisingly, children fared better if they had access to broadband internet. Asian and white households are more likely to have such high-speed connections, other studies have concluded.

Similarly, communities where adults voted and households participated in the US Census tended to have lower learning losses.

In general, institutional trust also mattered. The researchers write that communities where the majority of residents trusted institutions “may have been more willing to cooperate with their local schools and reduce disruption to student learning.”

Distrust may have been fueled by a number of factors, including the spread of pandemic-related political disinformation and suspicions stemming from deep-seated biases.

Overall, the study found that communities with a certain degree of cohesion and institutional involvement tend to provide a kind of safety net for children. “Communities with greater social capital, greater civic and volunteer participation, and greater connections among residents could better maintain social connections among residents and better support schools and households,” write the authors of the Education Recovery Scorecard.

What’s next?

Educators across the country have been desperate to catch up with students with intensive teaching and other forms of correction. But this may not be enough. The authors of the sobering Education Recovery Scorecard say better education is needed. And they point to an offer that may not be very popular with students: summer school.

“It seems clear that we need to approach recovery as an ongoing effort,” they write. “In order to fully recover, districts will need to continue to invest the agreed funds into student education in the coming years.”