Ever since the pandemic began, kids in grades K-12 have been struggling academically. Due to this, both parents and teachers worry that once the spread of Covid-19 decreases, kids will come back to school with lower grade performances. This is not the only possible issue that has been brought up. There is also concern that there will be a bigger group of students struggling to keep up  in between their low and high-performing peers. These issues have led us to this question: What sort of learning losses could we expect from the shortened 2019-2020 school year?

Due to the closing of schools back in March 2020, teachers have been struggling to find material they can use to teach their lessons, and parents have had hard times balancing work (if employed) and taking care of their children at home. Not to mention that most kids are also struggling with trying to adapt to virtual learning, while others are scared about becoming infected with Covid-19. We can’t forget that most of the Covid-19 pandemic has been around for many of the months that kids are usually enjoying summer and interacting with friends. Even though in-person learning is taking place in some schools, most schools are fully-virtual, schedules have been rearranged, and classrooms have fewer kids. Therefore, not only do students have to deal with mostly no face-to-face learning, but when they do go to school for in-person learning, they most likely won’t see their friends. This will have a detrimental affect on their social health when in-person school starts to take place again. 

In order to test this theory, 5 million MAP tests taken by students in grades 3-8 from 2017-2018 have been reviewed and compared from 2019-2020 to the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year. The results are very worrisome! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These results indicate that students have drastically fallen behind academically, especially in mathematics, students are more likely to enter school with a lower performance than normal, and that students who lost more over the summer have a lot more to gain when the school year starts.

Overall, Covid-19 has had negative effects on students in other areas of their lives, not just academically. Many students may not have the proper equipment at home that is needed to complete schoolwork, such as computers or even textbooks. Those who have parents that have become unemployed due to the pandemic may not have enough money to buy resources. Others may have relatives that have been infected with the pandemic and have passed on, while others may be too scared to leave their home in fear of contracting Covid-19. We hope that with this information, the school system will do its best to ensure that each and every student is able to learn and catch up on what they might have missed. We are all still learning how to live with Covid-19.