Washington D.C., Jul 12, 2023 / 08:21 am
A new national survey shows students in the United States are still struggling to make up learning loss experienced over the course of the COVID-19 crisis.
The report this week from NWEA examined test scores from nearly 7 million elementary and middle school students in about 20,000 public schools around the U.S.
The researchers found that “achievement gains in 2022–23 lagged pre-pandemic trends” in nearly all surveyed students, with numbers “falling short of pre-pandemic averages by 1–19% in reading and by 6–15% in math.”
The NWEA noted that the decline was sharper than what was observed in 2021-2022. Reading in upper-level grades suffered the most, the researchers said. Overall, the average student at the end of the school year required over four months of additional schooling in both math and reading to come up to grade level, the report said.