How To Recover From K-12 Student Learning Loss

By Bruno V. Manno

The staggering K-12 student learning loss from school closures during the pandemic haunts America’s education system. The result might be called education’s long COVID. K-12 school system-led efforts are underway to remedy the problem, with some promising results, but an “urgency gap” exists between what is being done and what needs to be done. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona calls the pace of efforts to deal with this education emergency “appalling and unacceptable. It’s like ... we’ve normalized [it].”

Failing to meet the challenges of pandemic learning loss will mean that our young people, especially the most vulnerable, face a diminished future. For example, Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek calculates that if learning loss is not reversed, the average student’s lifetime earnings will be 6% lower than they would have been without learning loss—the equivalent of a 6% income tax surcharge on students’ working lives. Additional research shows negative effects on other life outcomes, such as increased teen motherhood, more incarcerations and higher arrest rates. Nor will these destructive outcomes be distributed equally. The most disadvantaged students will suffer the worst consequences.

K-12 leaders and teachers alone cannot solve the learning loss problem. They need to reboot their current problem-solving efforts and develop community-wide recovery strategies that are honest with families about the enormity of COVID learning losses; are informed by the most promising evidence on what is working to remedy the problem; and include a community report card that details the progress being made and what still needs to be done to remedy learning loss.

The Learning Loss Puzzle

The assessment provider Northwest Evaluation Association reports that students in grades three to eight lost ground in reading and math during the 2022-23 school year. On average, they would need four additional months in school to reach pre-pandemic levels, though “average” hides variation across characteristics such as grade levels, subjects, race and income levels. These results parallel other analyses, including one from the National Assessment of Educational Progress known as the Nation’s Report Card. Post-pandemic international tests tell a similar tale for math. “Different test. Same story,” says Mark Schneider, director of the federal Institute for Education Sciences.

The January 2024 Education Recovery Scorecard reports promising academic improvement news for the first time since COVID school closures. It uses spring 2023 academic learning data from school districts in 30 states. Students recovered about one-third of the three-year learning loss in math and one-quarter of that loss in reading. But progress is uneven, with learning gaps still growing between rich and poor and between racial groups, and with significant differences between states.

Five factors contribute to the learning loss puzzle.

1. Student Mental Health Has Declined

From April to October 2020, when the pandemic peaked and widespread school closures began, mental health visits to emergency departments rose by 24% over pre-pandemic levels for children ages 5-11 and 31% for those ages 12-17. By April 2022, 70% of public schools reported increasing percentages of children seeking school mental-health services, compared with pre-pandemic levels. Record-high suicides among the public were reported during the pandemic, rising fastest among young people. A 10-year trend report on Youth Risk Behavior by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts this mental health decline into context, especially revealing disparities by student subsets such as sex, race and ethnicity.

2. Students and Teachers Are Missing in Action

Student chronic absenteeism, defined as missing at least 10% or 18 days of a school year, increased in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, reaching an unprecedented current all-time high and affecting students from all backgrounds and ethnicities. It affected almost 30% of K-12 students, or 14.7 million, nearly double pre-pandemic rates. Chronic absenteeism was most severe in low-income schools, but wealthy districts were also affected, up from 3% of schools pre-pandemic to 14%. Chronic teacher absenteeism also increased in 2021-22 compared with a typical pre-pandemic school year, and fewer substitute teachers are available.

3. B-flation Is Widespread

Parents’ perceptions of what children are learning do not match the reality of learning loss. A Gallup and Learning Heroes parent survey found almost nine in 10 parents believe their child is “at or above grade level” in reading (88%) and math (89%), while eight in 10 say they have a clear understanding of how their children are achieving academically. These rose-colored glasses are a function of bad information: Parents largely rely on report cards as the primary source of academic information, and 8 in 10 say their children receive Bs or better. This B-flation sends false signals to parents that inflate their knowledge of how children are doing academically. This disconnect is a “delusion of rigor.”

4. The Social Fabric of Communities Has Frayed

The pandemic disrupted young people’s social connections and relationships with family members, students, educators and the larger community. For example, greater learning loss occurred in communities with higher COVID death rates, higher reported adult anxiety and depression and higher disruptions to daily routines. Conversely, less learning loss occurred in communities with fewer strains on parents and teachers and lighter social restrictions. Young people also experienced personal losses. As many as 283,000 lost one or both parents to the pandemic, and about 359,000 lost a primary or secondary caregiver, including a grandparent. These social dislocations are force multipliers for student academic challenges.

5. Schools Face a Fiscal Time Bomb

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, “During the pandemic, all 50 states recorded lower enrollments in fall 2020 than in fall 2019.” Half the states saw declines of 2% or more. While these declines occurred for a variety of reasons, they amount to almost 1.3 million students, which The New York Times calls a “supersized ... seismic hit.” Declining enrollment means less school funding. Additionally, the federal government will soon stop funding pandemic K-12 relief, which on average is a one-year reduction of $1,000 in federal spending per student. These factors create a fiscal cliff for many school districts.

A Community Learning Loss Recovery Program in Three Steps

These five factors—struggling students, chronic absenteeism, ill-informed parents, frayed communities and a fiscal dilemma—create major impediments to addressing the learning loss puzzle. A reinvigorated recovery program must treat the recovery effort as not simply a school district problem. It is a community problem that the community must solve.

There are three things every community can do to create a community recovery plan. First, openly acknowledge the scope of the learning loss problem—to ensure that everyone knows the problem exists. Second, develop a strategy to solve the problem. Third, establish accountability by creating a report card to keep the community informed on the progress being made to solve the problem. Communities should craft an approach to the learning loss puzzle that is transparent, evidence-based and accountable.

1. Define the Problem so Everyone Knows Learning Loss Is Real

The disconnect between the reality of learning loss and how well parents think their child is doing academically must be overcome. As one report puts it, learning loss is not “only among other children.” District and community leaders must communicate the severity and scope of the learning loss problem to parents so they understand the pandemic’s harmful educational aftermath and the perils of B-flation complacency. They need to make certain that parents receive and understand academic achievement information on their children beyond their report cards. The counterpart to this truth-telling is to ensure that increased student learning and support for teacher development are the “North Star” guiding recovery efforts. This North Star must direct the deployment of financial, human and other community resources to create a strong foundation for a community recovery effort.

2. Develop a Community Recovery Plan

A plan should include specific strategies and milestones along the way for overcoming learning loss. It should build on the lessons learned thus far in recovery efforts, especially the signals parents are sending about the different educational options they want for their children. There are many evidence-based and promising educational programs to consider.

3. Create a Community Report Card

The Education Recovery Scorecard tracks efforts across 8,000 school districts in 30 states to measure reading and math test scores and evaluate whether these districts are making progress in overcoming learning loss. Each community needs to create its own version of a such a scorecard, using multiple measures to track progress based on the program strategies it has developed.

A report card will ensure that the plan’s implementation remains on track and produces the desired outcomes in combatting learning loss. It must ask questions such as: How are students progressing academically? Which ones are, or are not? Are those who need tutoring receiving it? Is chronic absenteeism decreasing? Quantifying the answers to these questions holds schools, local leaders, educators, students, parents and other stakeholders accountable for results. “There must be equal parts support and accountability to get the best for our children,” says Cardona. A community report card provides a transparent look into how effectively strategies are being implemented, and which areas need more attention or resources in the effort to overcome learning loss.

Evidence-Based Programming for Combating Learning Loss

Because learning losses are unequally distributed across districts and demographics, there is no single roadmap for a recovery plan. That being said, here are three program areas that are essential to any recovery plan, with examples of different types of successful interventions that should be considered.

Program Area 1: Providing Academic and Social Support

There are multiple strategies to provide students with additional academic support. These include intensive small-group, virtual and high-dosage tutoring; competency-based instruction, with students advancing based on what they know and do rather than by age; summer school; making better use of student time on task; and offering financial incentives to students, parents and teachers for reading books, attending classes or achieving specific learning outcomes. Of these, two strategies are particularly suited to addressing the issues of chronic absenteeism and lagging academic performance.

Getting kids back to school. The causes of absenteeism are multiple, ranging from practical problems such as lack of transportation to deeper issues. Writing in The New York Times, David Leonhardt summarizes one analysis: “The biggest reason for the rise [in chronic absenteeism] seems to be simply that students have fallen out of the habit of going to school every day.” There is no easy fix for that, but it is vitally important that learning loss recovery efforts extend to students no longer in the classroom. The president’s Council of Economic Advisers reports that chronic absenteeism is related to multiple negative outcomes, including accounting for up to 27% and 45% of the test score decline in math and reading, respectively.

There are many program interventions for overcoming chronic absenteeism. Some are as simple as sending texts to parents about their child’s missed school. Others emphasize incentives by offering financial rewards for attendance. For example, two bipartisan legislators in Ohio are proposing cash payments to students and families for meeting student attendance requirements and graduating from high school. And there are district and school data tracking systems that include early warning signs of students missing school (though not all states have them, and their quality varies, especially in tracking socioeconomically disadvantaged students).

Other interventions emphasize face-to-face social connections and human elements such as home visits to see what the problem may be. Another example is Maine’s walking bus stop, where someone comes to a child’s house to walk that student to a bus stop. Other people-powered supports include mentors and counselors. For example, the National Partnership for Student Success is a public-private partnership that has recruited an estimated 187,000 adults toward its goal of 250,000 by 2025. The Partnership has an easy-to-use online process for individuals, schools, districts, employers, colleges and other community groups to get involved in this effort. The nonprofit Attendance Works has chronicled many of these possible solutions and organized them into three tiers of intervention that go from least to most intensive interventions, including involving other community agencies in the effort.

Offering high-dosage academic tutoring. Once students are back in the classroom, one of the most effective, evidence-based and popular strategies is high-dosage tutoring, currently used post-pandemic by 39% of public schools. Its characteristics include four or fewer students who work with a trained tutor during school for at least 30 minutes, no less than three days per week, for several months. (It should be noted that while 40 states provide funding for tutoring programs, only 26 states require their program to be aligned with these characteristics.) The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) calculates that states currently have set aside $700 million of their federal COVID relief funds to expand tutoring efforts, with $470 million specifically for high-impact tutoring programs.

Stanford University researchers at the National Student Support Accelerator report that this high-impact tutoring approach produces impressive academic results: Elementary students gain more than four months’ worth of learning in reading, and high school students gain more than 10 months of learning in math, equivalent to an additional school year. This high-impact tutoring approach also works for kindergarten students. For example, a recent randomized control trial of a program called Chapter One, a kindergarten reading tutoring program with part-time classroom teachers who provide one-on-one high-impact tutoring, found that the students assigned to the program were more than twice as likely to reach the program reading goals by the end of kindergarten using district-administered tests than nonparticipants.

Other studies have examined the effects of using online learning as part of this strategy. For example, a recent Stanford University randomized control study shows that a high-quality online early literacy tutoring program also improves student outcomes, though at a more modest level than in-person tutoring. And a University of Chicago Education Lab study shows that a blended learning, computer-assisted learning platform can rotate every other day with a tutor without sacrificing student outcomes. Finally, other groups such as Schoolhouse, Carnegie Mellon and Saga are studying how artificial intelligence video and transcript crawls can improve tutoring by providing timely feedback to tutors.

There are other approaches to delivering high-dosage tutoring. For example, a report from Georgetown University’s FutureEd and the National Student Support Accelerator documents three different models. The first, initiated during the pandemic by Teach for America, created the Ignite Fellowships that hire college students to provide high-dosage virtual tutoring in reading and math at no cost to participating schools in Greater Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A second model is a school district program in Odessa, Texas, that responded to the pandemic by creating a comprehensive tutoring program in 23 elementary and middle schools. A third model comes from the Great Oaks Foundation, which operates a charter school network in three northeastern states, using AmeriCorps volunteers as tutors as a core part of its model since before the pandemic.  

Finally, a synthesis of much of the research literature on tutoring implementation highlights three key aspects of an effective approach to this complex undertaking: faithful program design that meets the characteristics of high-quality tutoring; support from district and school leaders with paid administrative staff overseeing the program; and student enrollment and support processes that ensure access to the program. An analysis of state and district tutor vendor contracts shows that linking vendor payments with student outcomes, such as attendance and academic learning, ensures rigorous accountability for results. The Southern Education Foundation now has three groups of 17 districts across the U.S. using this approach.

No one strategy is likely to overcome the magnitude of the challenges brought on by learning loss. Hence different strategies should be combined to complement each other and increase effectiveness. For example, at the federal level, the Biden administration has proposed an Improving Student Achievement Agenda that combines high-dosage tutoring, increasing student attendance and expanding summer and after-school learning as three effective strategies that work in tandem to create a strong learning recovery program. “These three strategies have one central goal: giving students more time and more support to succeed,” says Cardona. This sentiment is echoed at the local district level. “I stopped looking for these silver bullets. More often than not, it is the compound effects of [many] good strategies” says Alberto M. Carvalho, the superintendent of schools in Los Angeles. That district has produced above-average recovery compared with the rest of California, according to the Recovery Scorecard.

Program Area 2: Using High-Quality Instructional Materials

Student learning recovery must be built on the academic foundation of high-quality classroom instructional materials with associated teacher professional development. There are several complementary efforts underway that are ripe for expansion—two are national and the other is state-based and legislative. The CCSSO leads one national effort, assisting 13 states that have adopted high-quality, standards-aligned curricula linked with teacher professional development. The states then work with school districts to adapt the materials and professional development to local needs.

Another national effort is the Leveraging Evidence to Accelerate Recovery Nationwide or LEARN Network led by SRI International and funded by the federal Institute for Education Sciences. It aims to promote learning growth among students by increasing the use of evidence-based curriculum materials and other products and programs to improve teaching and learning by working with state, district and school leaders. Their work includes training and coaching on how to use evidence-based educational products and two nationally representative surveys of school and district leaders on challenges and problem-solving approaches to inform their work.

The complementary state legislative effort is based on the science of reading. The American Federation of Teachers report on “Reading Reform Across America” documents that between 2019 and 2022, 223 reading laws were enacted in 45 states and the District of Columbia. The report examines 40 topics discussed in these laws, including student testing and accountability, teacher preparation and professional development, family engagement and student learning supports. It calls these laws “an ambitious, bipartisan, state-driven effort to improve U.S. reading outcomes through multilayered investments in teachers and students.”

These laws embody the five pillars of reading instruction, reflecting the 2000 report of the National Reading Panel, created by Congress and convened by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (The five pillars are phonemic awareness, or knowing speech sounds; phonics, or knowing how letter sounds are merged together to create words; vocabulary, or a collection of words; fluency, or using language easily and accurately; and comprehension, or the capacity to understand, including integrating relevant background knowledge with what is being read.) Much of this state legislation was catalyzed by Mississippi’s successful work to improve literacy and Tennessee’s early literacy initiative. States can implement similar approaches by consulting the resources produced by the CCSSO network’s community of practice, including its state implementation roadmap.

The American Federation of Teachers report points out that the success of these new laws depends on how well states implement a comprehensive approach. For example, a recent report from University of Michigan researchers shows that students in states with support for comprehensive program implementation—including efforts such as teacher coaching and student summer tutoring—had larger reading test score gains than those with less comprehensive support. Further, an analysis from the American School District Panel Project reports that when it comes to post-pandemic instruction, K-12 leaders should have two priorities: “centralizing and standardizing instructional materials and building principal and teacher capacity to support and deliver high-quality instruction.” Finally, the National Council on Teacher Quality has produced a policy action guide that outlines five actions states should take to strengthen teachers’ skills in teaching reading, including a state licensure test based on the science of reading.   

Program Area 3: Creating More Educational Options

As mentioned earlier, the pandemic caused an exodus from public schools of around 1.3 million students. Urban districts had significant declines, especially among younger students. This exodus is part of the problem (insofar as it is a major contributing factor to the “fiscal cliff” school districts face), but it also sends crucially important signals about what parents and students want and need. For while decreasing birth rates and immigration account for a small part of the decline, the far more decisive factor is that pandemic closures of schools propelled parents to do two things.

First, parents discovered they could “unbundle” the all-in-one package of school services that students receive into separate services that meet particular student needs, such as extracurricular activities or tutoring. This led them to new, flexible learning arrangements like microschools, learning pods and homeschooling, which hit record levels to become what the Washington Post calls “America’s fastest growing form of education.” Second, parents chose new school options for their children, including public charter and private and parochial schools. For example, the number of students enrolled in private schools was higher in nearly every state and D.C. in 2022 compared with before the pandemic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  

This is not a passing fad. Public opinion polls reflect Americans’ desire for more educational choices. For example, Morning Consult’s nationally representative monthly poll findings from 2023 show Americans support policies that provide families with access to more education options. Around three of four parents support the freedom to choose public charter schools; participate in open enrollment so their child can attend a public school other than the one assigned to them; use education savings accounts (ESAs), which give parents state-supervised funds to use for private school tuition or other educational services; and benefit from vouchers, which let them use taxpayer dollars to pay for their child to attend a private school. Roughly two of three members of the general public also support these policies. ESAs are especially popular among those who identify as liberals, who support these programs at a higher rate than conservative respondents. Support also holds strong across age demographics, with roughly two of three Gen Z and baby boomers supporting ESAs.

Record numbers of state policymakers have responded to this demand for more educational options. For example, they have expanded school-choice options such as open enrollment across school district boundaries and tax-credit scholarships. Thirteen states now have ESA programs. And in states with school voucher programs, more people than planned are applying for them.

Extensive research suggests that school choice programs serve effectively to improve traditional public schools, even though many feared that giving families more choices would undermine traditional public schools. A recent book by Cara Fitzpatrick entitled “The Death of Public School” concludes that “Contrary to what some critics claim, traditional public schools have seen some positive effects from competition.” The Fordham Institute has chronicled these studies of competitive effects, including those that examine the results of charter school competition and private school competition. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study of a Los Angeles school district’s public school choice program shows improved student outcomes. The program narrowed achievement and college enrollment gaps between traditional district schools with attendance boundaries and district-choice schools without attendance boundaries. The Fordham report concludes: “We should root for all these [policies because they are] generally good for families taking advantage of greater options, while also helping to improve traditional public schools.”

Education’s long COVID will not go away by wishing it away. The burden is on K-12 advocates and stakeholders to up their game and develop a community-wide response to COVID learning loss. This approach must begin by confronting the learning loss crisis honestly, by tackling it with a variety of evidence-based strategies appropriate to a community’s needs, and by developing a report card that transparently measures progress and keeps stakeholders accountable.

Yes, the problem is massive, and the stakes are incredibly high. But the good news is, there are a range of proven strategies that can and will give students, teachers and parents the support they need to make meaningful strides toward closing the learning loss gap. This is an opportunity for genuine leadership, for rising to the challenge and mobilizing a community recovery effort worthy of our students. If we fail, the consequence will be a COVID generation of students who leave the K-12 system without having been adequately prepared to pursue opportunities or to reach their full potential.