While media coverage generally focuses on the Coronavirus’ impact on the global economy, which was serious, there is a potentially more insidious long-term consequence, the educational impact on a generation of American children, especially Black, Latinx, and Native American students. COVID has taken a toll on both learning and mental health.
A recently released study by NWEA (Northwest Evaluation Association) found some hopeful signs. There was demonstrable “academic rebounding” during the 2021–22 school year in reading and math, particularly among younger students.” However, average performance hides that younger Latinx, Black, and Native American children did not do as well as their white and Asian American peers. A major reason for the learning decline and larger racial gap appears to be extended remote learning during the pandemic. Low-income students and Black, Latinx, and Native students were already scoring behind Asian and white students because of disparities that begin early in childhood and the pandemic exacerbated these learning gaps. During the pandemic, in higher poverty schools with larger minority populations, students tended to spend more time learning at home in front of computer screens and as a result they lost the equivalent of 22 weeks of instruction.
Demographic differences in student performance are most noticeable in elementary school grades, which suggests that as these children grow older the larger learning gap will extend into middle school and high school. It could take three-to-five years for all children to reach earlier performance levels if they receive needed supported, but emergency federal COVID allocations expire long before then. School districts are required to spend the last of their COVID funds by September 2024.
According to a McKinsey report on the global impact of COVOD on education, lower levels of learning will translate into lower future earnings. As of January 2022, over 25% of the world’s students attended school systems that were still not fully open. The worst effected regions were Latin America, the Caribbean, and South Asia. In the United States, students in majority Black schools were found to be six months behind in mathematics and reading at the start of the 2021-2022 school year, while students in primarily White schools were only two months behind. McKinsey estimates that by 2040, the economic impact of COVID-related learning loss could lead to losses of $1.6 trillion worldwide annually.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on mental health concerns for U.S. high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a third (37%) of high school students self-reported that they experienced poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic; 44% reported of American high school students reported that they persistently felt sad or hopeless; and 55% reported that they had experienced emotional abuse from a parent or other adult in the home. Emotional abuse included being sworn at, insulted, or put down. 11% of high school students reported that they had suffered physical abuse as well. The CDC report did not differentiate based on race and ethnicity, however McKinsey found that parents of Black and Latinx students reported higher rates of concern about the mental health of their children.
While Senate Democrats are celebrating the current version of their budget reconciliation bill as a major victory, it does not include the $400 billion for early education in the original Build Back Better proposal that would have created vitally needed universal child care and pre-kindergarten. The education proposal was approved in the House version of the bill but blocked in the Senate by Republican opposition and conservative Democrats.
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