“The losses are not just due to what happened during the 2021 school year, but the aftershocks that have hit schools in the years since the pandemic,” said Tom Kane, a Harvard economist who worked on the analysis. “Most districts never had a plan, even on paper, for how they were going to help students get back to 2019 levels.”
While the trends in New England mirror those nationwide, Maine and Vermont lost more ground in reading than any other states. Students in Grades 3 to 8 in those two states are about one full year behind their 2019 peers, as losses compounded dramatically from 2022 to 2024.
The research, which used the gold standard Nation’s Report Card tests as a common yardstick to make state tests comparable across state and year, calls for a serious investment in catching students up, Kane said. States and districts should step in to make up for the now-expended billions in federal relief funds, which the data showed kept declines from being even worse, he said.
Maintained by researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth, the Recovery Scorecard provides the most comprehensive picture yet of how American students are performing since COVID-19 first disrupted learning.
The analysis, however, does illuminate bright spots where students have caught up, such as in Birmingham, Ala., Compton, Calif., and DeKalb County, Ga., meaning there is cause for hope despite the dreary overall picture.
Kane called for a societywide focus on combating chronic absenteeism as well as research to determine which of the many state- and district-level literacy curriculum bills and cellphone bans enacted in recent years are having an effect.
Schools also need to be honest with families about how their children are doing, the researchers argued: If parents continue to believe their children are on grade level, as most do despite the data, they are unlikely to agree to serious interventions.
Within New England, students in Rhode Island have recovered the most, yet are still a third of a year behind in reading and math. Nationwide, only students in Louisiana are notably stronger in either subject than pre-pandemic, up slightly from peers of five years ago in reading, and about level in math, as were students in Alabama.
To convert test scores into grade levels, researchers measured the gap in average test scores between grades; a Grade 4 student scoring at the average level of a Grade 5 student would be one grade level above average.
The research showed that higher-needs districts were particularly hard hit by the pandemic and have not closed the gap since.
“The highest poverty districts have fallen behind more than the lowest poverty districts,” said Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist who worked on the scorecard.
Persistent declines are widespread at the district level. Across Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, students in nearly 80 percent of districts remain behind their 2019 peers in each subject. (District-level data are not available for Vermont and Maine.)
Spokesperson Alana Davidson of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Education said Governor Maura Healey’s administration is focused on efforts to address learning loss, including increasing education funding, an awareness campaign on the importance of school attendance, and a major investment in early literacy.
“We know that there is more work to be done to help students recover from the pandemic and address learning loss,” Davidson said.
In New England as nationwide, the rare districts where students have recovered are largely disproportionately more affluent, including districts such as Lexington, Mass., Little Compton, R.I., and Woodbridge, Conn. Only a few districts with high levels of poverty have had students catch up, such as Cambridge, Mass., and Berlin, N.H.
Similar patterns are visible by race and ethnicity, the researchers found, with the pandemic widening preexisting gaps.
“Not only are districts serving more Black and Hispanic students falling further behind, but even within those districts, the Black and Hispanic students are falling further behind their their white district mates,” Reardon said.
None of the largest districts in New England have recovered. In math, declines from 2019 to 2024 range from about one-fifth of a grade level behind in Brockton, to nearly two grades behind pre-pandemic levels in New Haven and Lynn.
The researchers calculated the situation in America’s schools would be even more dire without the billions in pandemic federal relief funds sent to schools. The funds, which disproportionately went to high-poverty districts, reduced losses in those districts by about one-10th of a grade level, the analysis found.
Now that those funds have run out, Kane said, states and districts should use their own funds to continue academic catch-up activities that work, such as tutoring and summer learning. Thanks to high recent inflation, Massachusetts schools instead face a year of likely dire cuts. State legislators are discussing options to overhaul school funding.
Kane also called for efforts to reduce absenteeism, including public information campaigns.
“Mostly, we’ve left the challenge of helping students to catch up on school district leaders, principals, and teachers’ shoulders, but lowering absenteeism is one of the few things that mayors and employers and other community leaders could help with,” he said.
The researchers highlighted a few large districts around the country that have had more success post-pandemic, including Washington, D.C., and Union City, N.J.
Reading performance in Washington, D.C., hit an all-time high last year; the district’s students have improved by almost two grade levels since 2009, and dropped only modestly from 2019 to 2022.
District leaders pointed to investments including tutoring, teacher training, and a custom research-backed literacy curriculum as key ingredients for the system’s recent progress.
In Massachusetts, on the other hand, test scores have been declining since before the pandemic. Reading scores peaked in 2017 and math scores in 2013; students in the state are now about a grade level behind peak levels for both subjects.
Still students here posted the best scores on the Nation’s Report Card, and Massachusetts learners remain about half a year ahead of the 2019 national average. However, students in Boston schools are about a grade level behind that mark.
“Our recent NAEP scores show fourth-grade performance nearing pre-pandemic levels, validating our three-year investment in equitable literacy and high-quality materials,” said Boston Superintendent Mary Skipper in a statement. But, she acknowledged, older students continue to face learning loss and require further investment.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Christopher Huffaker can be reached at christopher.huffaker@globe.com. Follow him @huffakingit.