Learning Loss in the Third Grade

As  you know, we have been following the damage done by school shutdowns. Children who were deprived, thanks to teachers unions and government bureaucrats, of classroom learning have fallen behind. The chances of their being able to recover what they have lost are slim. The damage done by well-meaning pedagogues and bureaucrats exceeds what anyone can imagine.

The Hechinger Report sums it all up nicely, for your edification. It emphasizes the conditions of third graders, children who were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit:

Children in kindergarten when the pandemic broke out in the spring of 2020 are now roughly eight years old and in third grade this 2022-23 school year. A new report by the nonprofit educational assessment maker NWEA documents that third graders are currently suffering the largest pandemic-related learning losses in reading, compared to older students in grades four to eight, and not readily recovering. 

Why does the third grade matter?

Learning to read well in elementary school matters. After children learn to read, they read to learn. Poor reading ability in third grade can hobble their future academic achievement.  It also matters to society as a whole. Students who fall behind at school are more likely to be arrested, incarcerated and become teen mothers. A separate December 2022 analysis calculated that if recent academic losses from the pandemic were to become permanent, it would add up to $900 billion in lower lifetime earnings for the 48 million students in public schools.   

How alarming is it?

That’s why NWEA’s findings for third graders are alarming. The results emerged from an analysis of fall 2022 test scores of seven million elementary and middle school children across the nation, in which the reading abilities of third graders remained far behind what children used to be able to do in third grade before the pandemic. The differences between pre- and post-pandemic reading levels are smaller in older grades. While it’s good news that third graders are learning at a typical pace again and no longer falling further behind, they are also not gaining much extra ground. Their learning recovery is the smallest among students in grades three through eight. (See the purple reading graphic below.)

One has been told that a little tutoring and extra effort will compensate for the loss. The data tells us that such is not the case.

Third graders in 2022 are the furthest behind in reading, as depicted by the bar on the far left. So far they’ve recovered only 10 percent of their pandemic learning losses, which were at their greatest in the spring of 2021. Older grades are making better progress in catching up. 

Older children, those who learned to read before the pandemic, are doing much better:

Slightly older students in fifth, sixth and seventh grades, who were in second grade and above when the pandemic hit, are making much better progress in reading. If their current pace of learning continues, they’ll be on track to recover in two or three years, Lewis calculated. By contrast, it’s unclear when, if ever, current third graders will even catch up to pre-pandemic norms in reading. Lewis said there is a “long road to go” and that she estimates it will be “five plus years” for these third graders to catch up. That would be after eighth grade for this class of children. (See recovery graphic below.)

In case you were feeling optimistic about the American educational system, the report suggests that our schoolchildren were not doing very well before the pandemic:

It’s worth noting that pre-pandemic reading levels weren’t spectacular and had been deteriorating; most children were not proficient in reading for their grade level, as measured by a national yardstick. So, it’s an estimated “long road” to return to a rather low level of achievement that was already a subject of consternation and hand-wringing.

The current conditions are not encouraging:

Goodrow is hearing from third grade teachers that even children who can read words are having a much harder time paying attention to what they are reading than in previous years. Third graders are having greater trouble absorbing the meaning, identifying the main character or explaining what the story is about.