COVID-19 and Learning Loss—Disparities Grow and Students Need Help
The pandemic has set back learning for all students, but especially for students of color. Evidence-based acceleration approaches can help.
Educators, parents, and students know firsthand the high cost of this prolonged period of remote learning, from rising rates of depression and anxiety to the loss of student learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has taken an especially heavy toll on Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities. Along with robbing them of lives and livelihoods, school shutdowns could deny students from these communities the opportunity to get the education they need to build a brighter future.
In the spring, we examined how school shutdowns were likely to compound racial disparities in learning and achievement, analyzing the toll on learning, dropout rates, and the overall economy. We now share assessment data from this fall, which show that students, on average, started school about three months behind where we would expect them to be in mathematics. Students of color were about three to five months behind in learning; white students were about one to three months behind. The picture for reading is more positive, with students starting school just a month and a half behind historical averages.
Much has improved since the spring. States and school districts have made significant efforts to close the digital divide and improve remote learning, and the implementation of school-based health and safety precautions enabled some students to return to classrooms in the fall (although some of these gains are now at risk as COVID-19 cases spike across the country). However, Black and Hispanic students continue to be more likely to remain remote and are less likely to have access to the prerequisites of learning—devices, internet access, and live contact with teachers. Left unaddressed, these opportunity gaps will translate into wider achievement gaps.
Read more on the McKinsey & Company website