'Long Covid' for learning loss: 14% of schools caught up in reading and math

When schools closed for the Covid pandemic six years ago, experts said students' reading and math skills weren't "lost." It was merely "unfinished" learning. And it's still unfinished in six of seven schools.

Reading and math scores have rebounded to pre-Covid levels in Compton, California schools

Only 14 percent of schools have reached pre-Covid performance levels in both reading and math, reports Linda Jacobson in The 74. One third of caught up in reading or math, according to a recent report from NWEA, an assessment company. That jibes with state test test scores and last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress scores.

The pandemic made a bad trend worse, says Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. “One of the reasons that we’re not seeing recovery and that the results aren’t better is because of what was happening in the decade before the pandemic,” he said. “There was a slow degradation of academic achievement.”

Some districts that were improving before the pandemic have rebounded, writes Jacobson.

Compton Unified near Los Angeles, a high-poverty, majority Latino district, was seeing gains before the schools closed and caught up by 2023. "Superintendent Darin Brawley highlighted a mix of academic routines, like a math problem of the day, weekly quizzes and challenging writing assignments, that the district continued despite the disruption of school closures," she writes. In addition, teachers are using smart boards less and requiring students to keep math and language arts journals -- on paper -- to improve retention. 

Charleston County schools in South Carolina have made the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research’s list of 100 fully recovered districts in the nation, Jacobson notes. The district returned quickly to in-person instruction and offered high-intensity tutoring. Scores are higher than the state average -- but the gap is very large between white and black students and between students from middle-income and low-income families.

Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island and Tennessee have rebounded in math, according to a 2025 analysis by Brown researchers. Six states have rebounded in reading.