“The thing that really struck us as we looked across all of the data points 
 [is] there’s just a disproportionate impact for those [special populations of] students across the board,” said Robin Lake, director of the at Arizona State University.  “What I think really came through to us — especially in the parent interviews we conducted this year — was parents were experiencing a system that wasn’t functioning even before the pandemic effectively for them.”

At a press conference Tuesday, Lake called the report’s findings a “warning bell for systemic reform.” 

Disadvantaged students continue “bearing the brunt of slow and uneven recovery” from pandemic-era school closures, Lake said, and their struggles come at a time when their numbers are growing.

There was a surge of roughly 343,000 students identified for special education from the 2020–21 to the 2022–23 school years a trend which appears on track to continue. There are variations across states and student groups, with Black and Hispanic students being identified at higher rates.   

Lake said researchers are still trying to determine if this is just normal catch-up following under-identification during school closures, or if something more is going on.

The 2024 State of the American Student Report builds on two previous annual reports, which detailed the impact of COVID on students’ academic performance and well-being. Last year’s research focused on older students with little-to-no time left in the K-12 system, who saw what the organization described as “shocking declines” in college and career readiness. This year, CRPE interviewed parents and dug into data around particularly vulnerable student populations.

The academic impacts on students with disabilities and their rate of recovery varied from district to district, according to a CRPE-commissioned analysis by Georgia State professor Tim Sass. This, they believe, shows that what schools and districts did during and after the pandemic had real impact, but more research is needed to learn what kind of mitigation and recovery strategies proved most effective.

More than four years after COVID emerged, the average student who experienced school closures is still less than halfway to a , but Lake emphasized that averages can obscure particular students’ nuanced experiences. “Under the hood of average,” she said, she saw reason for both optimism and concern.

The good news: Students are bouncing back in some areas. The average student has recovered about of their pandemic-era learning losses in math and a quarter in reading.

Evidence-based practices, such as tutoring, high-quality curricula and extended learning time, are starting to get baked into school systems, she said, which she hopes will last beyond stimulus funds. 

Yet, many of these practices still aren’t reaching nearly enough students.

For example, across four major, urban public school systems in 2023, 8th graders with disabilities and English language learners continued to score significantly lower than their peers in English Language Arts. In New York City, 61% of all students demonstrated proficiency, while only 29% of students with disabilities and 9% of English learners did.

Chronic absenteeism also disproportionately plagues special populations, according to Sass’s analysis. And parents expressed frustration that during school closures their kids weren’t getting access to their legally required interventions. Simultaneously, they were concerned that expectations for their children were being lowered, while communication was dwindling.

“One of our researchers started referring to this as ghosting,” said Lake. “That the parents were being ghosted by their schools 
 [and] not getting information about how their kids were doing academically.” 

Ultimately, they felt blindsided when they found out just how far behind their children had fallen. As students have returned to school buildings, more have been flagged as having special learning needs and requiring special education, after a dip during the pandemic. 

Especially when looking at “COVID babies,” those who didn’t necessarily get access to preschool or typical socialization, Lake wondered, “Are they being funneled into special education as a solution or do they really have a disability that needs to be addressed in special education?” And, she added, “Is special education equipped to deal with this influx?”

CRPE’s analysis found that special education identification rates varied greatly across school districts in Massachusetts, which reports more detailed data than most other states. For example, the rate of identification in kindergarten in Boston grew from 14% to 18% between 2018 and 2024, while about an hour away in Worcester, the pre-K identification jumped far more, from 26% to 38%. Lake said this variation demonstrates that the approach to identification matters, but still “there are more questions than answers on this front.” 

Lake emphasized that while special populations may be struggling more acutely, many of the issues they face in the classroom are similar to those of their peers. 

“While we’re seeing a lot of kids moving into special education right now, maybe we need to flip the narrative and think about solving for the kids with the most complex needs,” she said. “And if we can figure out how to do that, making sure that all kids can be successful.”

A philanthropic initiative launched in 2022 to get students back on track from COVID learning loss is returning promising results, a new study suggests: just four weeks spent in the program last year helped students regain nearly one-fourth of their reading skills and one-third of math skills, compared to students who didn’t participate in the program.

The initiative, underwritten by and other funders, serves charter school students about to enter grades 1 through 9.  

Researchers at Arizona State University examined over 35,000 Summer Boost students in eight cities, finding that in just 22 days of programming, on average, students saw about three to four weeks of reading progress and about four to five weeks in math. In reading, that works out to making up about 22% of COVID learning losses; in math, it’s about 31%.

While students across all demographic groups got a boost, English Language Learners saw the strongest growth, achieving about seven to eight weeks worth of learning in just over four weeks. Researchers said students moving into grades 4-8 saw particularly accelerated growth.  

Students took part in the study in Baltimore, Birmingham, Indianapolis, Memphis, Nashville, New York City, San Antonio and Washington, D.C. 

Schools participating in Summer Boost are free to use either a provided curriculum or a high-quality one of their choice, but researchers found that about a third of schools used a “balanced kind of curricular approach” that reserved time for both academics and engaging enrichment activities, said ASU’s Geoffrey Borman, who led the research.

Schools that struck that balance, he said, had “the most positive impacts for kids.” 

In summer school more broadly, Borman noted, the biggest challenges are getting kids to show up and stay engaged across the summer — and attracting high-quality teachers at a time when “both teachers and kids would probably rather be on summer break.”

To that end, schools in the program are encouraged to use as much of their budget as possible to pay teachers, said Sunny Larson, K-12 Education Program Lead at Bloomberg. The incentive, she added, “really got those veteran educators back into the classroom.”

Many prioritized hiring teachers who had already worked with these students during the school year. That allowed a continuity “that I also think was beneficial,” said Borman. 

Previous research suggests that pandemic recovery has essentially stalled for most students, with many needing the equivalent of about four more months in school to catch up to pre-pandemic levels. Ninth-graders need a full year of extra school to catch up, according to 2023 findings from the assessment provider NWEA.

Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, said the findings were promising, but that he’d like to know whether the effects persist throughout the school year.

“While I think many have the perception that summer school is rarely effective, these results show that well designed summer programs can indeed be a helpful tool to help catch children up or accelerate their growth,” he said. The results suggest the impact of Summer Boost is “very promising — on par with regular school-year learning rates.”

‘Effective guardrails’ in place

The program includes at least 90 minutes each of English Language Arts and math instruction daily with a 25:1 student-teacher ratio. Summer programs must maintain an average daily attendance rate of 70% to get full funding — “effective guardrails” that ensure high quality, Borman said.

While they have flexibility in how they recruit, they’re encouraged to seek out students who can most benefit. 

Summer Boost originated in 2022, when Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, likened stalled academic progress from the pandemic to “the educational equivalent of long COVID.”

“Summer is the most underused — and unequal — time of year educationally,” said Harvard University researcher Thomas Kane, who served as an adviser to the research. “With so many students far behind, I hope this study inspires more school districts to expand their summer learning options.”

Kane noted that to expand the school year beyond 180 days incentivizes districts “to replace what students lost during the pandemic, which was instructional time.” 

Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, whose helped gauge the program’s effectiveness, said she was glad to see its positive impact. 

“There is real urgency to use summer programs to provide specific, personalized support for struggling students so that they can return to school ready for grade-level work,” she said. “Assessing students relative to grade level standards is the most accurate way to understand where they are and what support they need.”

Huff noted that Curriculum Associates will soon release research showing student academic growth “still has a way to go” to recover to pre-pandemic levels, especially for the youngest students. “The Summer Boost program results underscore this, and show that when given the right supports, students can accelerate their learning.”

In the new ASU study, researchers noted a few caveats. For instance, they admitted that the findings are based on only one year of data and can’t provide evidence of impact over time. It’s possible, they said, that the findings may change as more years of data are added and the sample size increases. 

They also noted that many student records in the sample were incomplete, missing either math or reading pre- or post-test scores.   

Also missing: key student demographic data, meaning that researchers couldn’t analyze all of the students’ scores in relation to indicators such as race, gender and socioeconomic status. And the data don’t include how students ended up in the program, limiting researchers’ ability to compare it to other types of summer learning programs that may have different enrollment requirements. 

But Borman noted that research on such large groups rarely yields such strong results, “And the fact that these outcomes are seen pretty consistently across thousands of kids and multiple cities, I think that lends even more power to these results.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Michael Bloomberg’s party affiliation when he ran for president in 2020.

Higher education is under increased pressure to prove its value, and the pandemic presented us with an opportunity to reexamine outdated assumptions and approaches.

Opinion surveys capture part of the challenge. While the majority of Americans continue to trust in the value of higher education, the belief that colleges and universities have a positive effect on the country and local communities dropped from 69% in 2020 to 55% in 2022. This declining public trust, attributable to such factors as student debt and costs of attendance, underscores the work ahead. Here at ASU, as the New American University and a National Service University, we have centered the changing needs of students and their families as the pandemic pushed those needs to a new level.

We’re Responding to the Pandemic in Several Important Ways

Adjusting student support. The enforced isolation of the pandemic has delayed developmental milestones for many of our traditional-aged students, affecting their social development, emotional health, and cognitive readiness. Incoming students are displaying behavior we might expect of younger adolescents, with difficulties managing their daily responsibilities, challenges resolving interpersonal conflicts, and troubling incidents of violence, vandalism, and even vigilantism. Students who feel under-prepared for the learning environment may draw attention, albeit maladaptively, to their struggles.

We are testing several approaches to improve conduct, enhance safety, and promote success. In some of our residential settings, where we have noted an increase
in property destruction, our community assistants and community directors will ask students to set some of their own rules. Do you want quiet hours? If so, when? How should our common areas look? Do we establish a type of neighborhood watch? What happens to students who don’t abide by these expectations? Instead of rules imposed from above, students will be empowered to take the lead.

Another approach will be to increase the presence of our campus safety aides, students paid to circulate around campus and in the residential communities. They identify security risks (e.g., unlocked or propped doors, damage), and we have found their presence helps to deter problematic behavior. We are also moving toward the tightened access

controls that were more common during the pandemic, evaluating who needs access to what portions of the residential community or building.

To improve health, well-being, and student success, we are continuing some of the approaches
that the pandemic forced on us while expanding other supports. Notably, we will continue using technology to increase access to services, resources, and care at the times convenient for students. We expect to see continued use of Zoom advising appointments, telehealth, telecounseling, and texting. We are also expanding the use of our chatbot, Sunny, to deliver information and interact with students. Sunny has the ability to refer students to the appropriate resources and alert our teams to students in distress.

Expanding inclusive and compassionate learning practices. We are accelerating our efforts to redesign everything, from buildings to instruction, to serve the diverse range of students. Not only the nearly 10,000 students who receive disability resources or accommodations from us, but all students will benefit from increased flexibility in instruction and assessment. Instead of a test at the end of every course, what about allowing students to choose how to demonstrate mastery of material? Instead of insisting that all students come back to class now that the pandemic is over, how do we serve the students for whom remote learning was a godsend—those students who would rarely speak in class but were avid users of the chat function on Zoom?

Compassionate and inclusive learning strategies can benefit everyone, yet they have an especially marked effect on students with disabilities and others who were disproportionately affected during the pandemic. Requiring students to document a disability in order to receive accommodations favors those with means, access, and resources. Inclusive learning practices challenge us to deliver content in a variety of ways, allowing students to engage with the materials and express their comprehension through
various mechanisms. If we want more students to succeed, compassionate and inclusive design should become the norm; thus, we are working closely with faculty to implement these practices.

Blurring the lines between K-12 and higher ed. Another way that higher education can capitalize
on this moment is to blur our lines with K-12. When students can get a degree faster through dual enrollment or credits for passing scores on Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams, the financial and time investment may prove less daunting. Our ASU Preparatory Academy (ASU Prep; brick-and-mortar) and ASU Prep Digital offer ideal pathways for this kind of acceleration.

We can also move career exploration earlier in the educational journey, to middle school, helping students discover their interests and then mapping out possible choices and options. Knowing the relationship of a particular degree to a particular career will help connect the dots in meaningful ways. If students and their families understand that college increases the likelihood of a secure career, then we might have a chance to convince those critical of higher education that it still offers the most promising pathway for enhanced economic, social, physical, and emotional well-being.

This leap of faith requires that we address those students and their families who choose work over school for very immediate and understandable reasons. One solution that we offer students who tell us they need to work: “Come work for us. We have no shortage of jobs on campus, plus you’ll get a tuition benefit.” This is a win-win for us and for them.

Prioritizing access. Despite the selectivity that many colleges maintain in order to increase their rankings, we must shift our focus to providing both accessible and excellent learning environments. Higher education has long needed to reconsider its admission requirements and allow students
to demonstrate readiness in different ways—such as the test-optional admissions that increased significantly during the pandemic. Increased accessibility will help to ensure a diverse student population, contributing to a richer learning environment. We should also encourage and

empower the return of students who needed to step away from their studies during the pandemic. Furthermore, at ASU we have contemplated next steps for two other types of students: 1) those whose learning loss or disruptions during the pandemic may have kept them out of higher education institutions, and 2) those who may have long ago given up on the idea of a college degree. Opportunities like Earned Admission provide a reasonable and attainable pathway for entry into higher education.

Last year’s State of the American Student report observed, “A public education system built for rigidity and sameness collapsed in the face of uncertainty and highly varied needs.” A higher education system built upon the same principles encounters a similar dilemma. We must consider what subjects are best taught in what ways for what learners. Students shouldn’t feel forced to learn only in the ways that we find convenient but in ways they need, want, and can learn most effectively.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

More than three years after the pandemic began, a crisis in teaching quality may be stalling academic recovery, new research shows. 

Faced with exhaustion, staffing shortages, and frequent student disruptions, many educators are using “outdated and ineffective” methods and content below grade level, according to a by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University, part of a research project done in conjunction with the RAND Corporation. 

Researchers analyzed interviews from 30 leaders, predominantly superintendents and chief academic officers, across five traditional districts and charter systems. 

To cover extra classes amid shortages, teachers lost prep periods and opportunities to collaborate with colleagues, the report found. Many went years without feedback from principal observations, and are managing higher rates of challenging student behavior. These challenges, and a tight labor market that leans on early career educators who don’t yet have the experience to weather them, are all contributing to the crisis.

As a result, educators reverted to older, more basic strategies. For instance, students were asked to work in groups without further direct instruction from the teacher; prompted to use screens or technology unnecessarily; and were frequently disengaged. 

“Just like we’re hearing about student learning loss, these leaders were seeing that their teachers were also experiencing teaching loss,” said Lydia Rainey, who co-authored the last of four reports that explored how school leaders were responding to the pandemic with Paul Hill and Robin Lake.

Teaching quality is not solely responsible for the stall in academic progress — high dosage tutoring and technology supports, baked into recovery plans to help fill academic gaps, were ideals difficult to obtain in practice. 

It’s possible, too, that teachers’ classroom choices have been impacted by .  

“When folks are stressed or depressed, or have not fully mastered what policy is asking them to do, they will revert to what they know. And what a lot of people know is how they went to school,” Rainey said. 

Both researchers and the leaders they interviewed were shocked by how much the quality of instruction had suffered in the wake of the pandemic — something leaders didn’t anticipate when drafting recovery plans. 

“No one was thinking about this possibility, that teaching would suffer returning to school,” Rainey added. “Beyond just these leaders, this was not in the national conversation about COVID recovery, either. This was a surprise to them and to us.”

As one leader at a mid-sized, suburban district in the West summarized, there’s “a survival mode in teacher practice” right now.  For an urban charter system leader on the East coast, “It’s difficult to point to a model classroom at this point.”

Staffing and mental health crises that put teachers under daily duress also strained efforts to boost instruction quality. Leaders knew teachers “were ‘exhausted,’ and they worried about asking them to do more,” according to the report.

Beyond the classroom, a compounding challenge is making accelerated learning a nearly impossible task: ambitious school district recovery plans have gone unrealized.

“Tutoring has been difficult, retention bonuses were ineffective, technology tools that they purchased didn’t work exactly as hoped,” said Rainey.

Still, teachers were tasked with bringing pandemic learners back on track, without planned support from key interventions like quality high-dosage tutoring. 

In the 2022-23 school year, leaders diverted time and resources away from tutoring or other student interventions in order to rebuild teachers’ core skills.

The response, because resources are limited, “means there are few, if any, of the extra supports that research suggests will help the students who need them most,” the report stated. 

Researchers recommend that federal Title I funding become more flexible, so that schools can afford both to address learning and teaching loss, and encourage states to subsidize and evaluate high quality tutoring options. 

Principals could continue to ask teachers directly about what supports they need and provide regular feedback from classroom observations, Rainey said. 

They also suggested leaders leverage quality resources already in their communities, like bringing parents in to tutor as has, and consider creative ways to support students who may graduate with core gaps in knowledge, like gap year programs.  

While findings are not representative of all U.S. public schools, they do provide some explanation behind in academic performance. Systems represented in the report serve 6,000 to 40,000, predominantly students of color and large proportions of low-income students.

“These five systems are showing that they can’t get out of this on their own,” said Rainey. “This is really an all-hands-on-deck moment.”