‘I Used to Like School’: An 11-Year-Old’s Struggle With Pandemic Learning

By one estimate, three million students nationwide, roughly the school-age population of Florida, stopped going to classes, virtual or in person, after the pandemic began. A disproportionate number of those disengaged students are lower-income Black, Latino, and Native American children who have struggled to keep up in classrooms that are partly or fully remote, for reasons ranging from poor internet service to needing to support their families by working or caring for siblings. Many are homeless or English language learners. Others whose parents work outside the home have struggled in the absence of adult supervision. Studies of how much learning American students have lost in the past year are underway, but the preliminary reports are mostly grim. Even one of the more optimistic surveys found significant losses in math, with a doubling of the proportion of students described as “sliders,” because they had moved down in their rankings compared with a typical year. Another national study, from the assessment company Curriculum Associates, found a decline of up to 16 percent in the number of elementary school students performing at grade level in math, and up to 10 percent in the number of students performing at grade level in reading.