COVID-19 Fallout
More Students of Color at Risk in Reading After Pandemic
More K–3 students are at risk in reading as a result of learning
losses related to the public policy response to the pandemic. Black
and Latinx students are particularly affected. The good news: "Many
students have begun to recover from lost literacy instruction,"
according to a new report.
The report,
from education technology company Amplify,
is based on end-of-year reading data for 1.2 million K–3 students.
It found that schools have begun to effect a return to normalcy in
the number of students who are at the greatest risk of not learning
to read, at least in grades K–2.
In grade 3, however, the number of at-risk students stayed the same.
In all grades, the number of students at risk is still worse than in
the 2019–2020 academic year.
According to Amplify: "As many students returned to the
classroom in the spring, schools made progress in reducing the number
of students who were at the greatest risk of not learning how to
read. While these gains are important for overcoming instructional
loss, the percentage of students at risk of not reading across grades
K–3 is still higher than the 2019–20 school year due to pandemic
disruptions. Moreover, these remaining instructional losses have
widened the national gaps in early reading skills between Black and
Hispanic students and their white counterparts."
The report also found that the "gaps nationally between Black
and Hispanic students and their white counterparts are now much
greater in every grade (kindergarten, grade 1, grade 2, and grade 3)
than they were before the pandemic."
For example, the percentage of black students in the highest risk
category in grade 1 grew from 32% before the pandemic to 44% after.
The percentage of Hispanic students in this category grew from 30% to
38%. Meanwhile, the percentage of white students in the highest risk
category went from 20% to 21% in the same period.
The complete report, Students
start to recover from instructional loss, is freely available on
Amplify's site as a PDF.