Can Learning Loss Be Overcome?

You’ve read it here before. You read it, because I reported it, during the pandemic school closures. All the best information I could gather suggested that school lockdowns were a very bad idea indeed. It suggested that all the blather about making it up through tutoring was just so much hot air. The damage to children was significant. The teachers’ unions refused to take responsibility and a generation of American children has suffered the consequences.

I repeat the point, which is not new, to emphasize, for those who have generously donated to this blog, that we provide a worthwhile public service. The world would be a better place if we had more influence in these matters.

But, I digress.

When we turn to the most recent New York Times report on pandemic learning loss, we see, first, that the Times offers a comprehensive, world wide, take on the problem. Countries like Denmark and Sweden did not have a problem because they did not close schools. Similarly with Florida and many other American states. But also, we are struck by the fact that the Times dispenses with the glib assurance that it will be easy to make up the loss.

For example:

Children experienced learning deficits during the Covid pandemic that amounted to about one-third of a school year’s worth of knowledge and skills, according to a new global analysis, and had not recovered from those losses more than two years later.

As we often pointed out, the victims of the school lockdown policy were poor and disadvantaged children. Again, the loss is not easily remedied:

Learning delays and regressions were most severe in developing countries and among students from low-income backgrounds, researchers said, worsening existing disparities and threatening to follow children into higher education and the work force.

The findings suggest that the challenges of remote learning — coupled with other stressors that plagued children and families throughout the pandemic — were not rectified when school doors reopened.

Thomas Kane, the faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, who has studied school interruptions in the United States, reviewed the global analysis. Without immediate and aggressive intervention, he said, “learning loss will be the longest-lasting and most inequitable legacy of the pandemic.”

As it happened, the problems with learning math were more extensive than were those in learning to read:

Delays were worse in mathematics than in reading, Mr. Betthäuser said, possibly because math requires more formal instruction and because reading comprehension generally improves with brain development as children grow. Data shows that students of lower socioeconomic status shouldered much of the burden, likely because they faced noisy study spaces, spotty internet connections and economic turbulence.

Importantly, for our theorizing, children who had been locked out of school had trouble reintegrating. They had to relearn social skills and were suffering from the mental health issues that accompany disconnection:

Dr. Damon Korb, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician who founded the Center for Developing Minds, was unsurprised to discover that learning deficits were consistent across grade levels. He said that many young children whom he treated struggled to reintegrate to classrooms quickly because they needed to relearn basic socialization skills. And teenagers returned to schools bearing anxiety disorders “beyond anything I’ve ever seen in my career,” he said.

In America, things were bleak indeed. And yet, parents did not really notice. This is not a good sign:

In the United States, one study showed that the average public elementary or middle school student lost the equivalent of a half-year of learning in math, and 6 percent of students were in districts that lost more than a full year. Standardized math test scores in 2022, when compared with those in 2019, showed the largest drop ever recorded in the three decades since the exam was first administered.

The findings challenge the perceptions of many parents, almost half of whom said in 2022 surveys that they did not believe their children had suffered any achievement loss during the pandemic, and only 9 percent of whom expressed concern about whether their children would catch up.

Again, the Times emphasizes that remedies are of doubtful effectiveness, no matter what the teachers’ unions think:

Because children have a finite capacity to absorb new material, Mr. Betthäuser said, teachers cannot simply move faster or extend school hours, and traditional interventions like private tutoring rarely target the most disadvantaged groups. Without creative solutions, he said, the labor market ought to “brace for serious downstream effects.”

In short, we’re screwed.