A girl attends an online class at a learning hub in the Crenshaw Family YMCA in Los Angeles in February 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If left unaddressed, this could alter the trajectories and life opportunities of a whole cohort of young people, potentially reducing their abilities to pursue rewarding and productive careers in mathematics, science and technology,” he said.The NCES data, however, does not offer insight into how these learning losses played out at a local level. That is why researchers at Harvard and Stanford Universities joined forces to create the, which breaks down these academic losses by district.
Kids in high-poverty districts, he explained, suffered much larger learning losses on average than those in more affluent and low-poverty districts. According to the People in low-income communities were much more likely to work on the front lines or as essential workers at the height of the pandemic. These communities experienced not only the most severe rates of COVID-19 sickness and death, but also the highest rates of job loss, housing instability and food security. As a result, children in these communities saw the greatest declines in academic achievement.The time spent in remote learning also impacted learning loss.
“Some of the strategies should be focused on education, so tutoring and extra support for kids to learn, particularly those kids who really fell the furthest behind,” he said. But he added that support for kids and their families should go far beyond academic instruction. Providing mental health support for children, and helping their families find jobs and some economic stability, are also important, he said.