Over four years after the start of mass school lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, many children are still feeling the educational effects. According to a new report from the testing nonprofit Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), student test score growth is still failing to rebound to pre-COVID levels, and some children would need as much as nine months of extra schooling to catch up.
"Our findings make it clear that the road to recovery from the pandemic's impact on student achievement is far from over," reads an NWEA research brief released this week. "The effects continue to reverberate, even for the youngest students entering the education system years after the initial onset of the pandemic. At the end of 2021–22, we optimistically concluded that the worst was behind us and that recovery had begun. Unfortunately, data from the past two school years no longer support this conclusion."
