This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for a free weekly newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing.
Just as COVID hit some communities much harder than others, schools across the U.S. suffered disparate academic losses in the wake of the pandemic.
But new research points to a surprising finding: Students within the same district seemed to experience similar academic setbacks, regardless of their background. In the average district, white and more affluent students lost about the same amount of ground in reading and math as Black and Hispanic students and students from low-income families.
To researchers, that suggests that factors at the school district and community level — like whether students received quality remote instruction and whether communities experienced a strict lockdown — were bigger causes of test score declines than what was going on in students’ homes.
“Where children lived during the pandemic mattered more to their academic progress than their family background, income, or internet speed,” a team of researchers wrote in a new report.
The report offers some insight into why school districts experienced a wide range of academic losses during the pandemic. Citing pre-pandemic evidence that learning loss can persist for years without major interventions beyond normal instruction, it also points to the need for more intensive academic recovery efforts in some places. Those findings come as many schools are under pressure to reach more students with extra help like tutoring, and school leaders are trying to figure out the best ways to spend the limited COVID relief funding they have left.
