Pandemic Fallout: Kids Still Struggling in School

Years after COVID-19 school closures, America’s youngest students remain trapped in a learning crisis manufactured by prolonged lockdowns and failed remote learning policies that devastating new data confirms are still robbing children of fundamental reading skills.

Story Snapshot

First and second graders tested in 2024-2025 still score below pre-pandemic reading levels, with no recovery since COVID disruptions
NWEA report reveals reading scores remain flat while math shows marginal improvement, exposing uneven academic damage
Lower-performing students and minority communities suffered largest declines, widening equity gaps created by remote learning inequities
Long-term consequences threaten workforce readiness and economic productivity as reading deficits predict college dropout and career struggles

Pandemic School Closures Leave Lasting Academic Damage

The Northwest Evaluation Association released findings on March 10, 2026, documenting that first and second graders in the 2024-2025 school year continue performing substantially below pre-pandemic benchmarks in reading. The report analyzed student test scores and confirmed what many parents suspected: the effects of prolonged school closures and remote learning still plague America’s youngest learners. While math scores demonstrate slow improvement, reading proficiency remains stagnant at levels first observed during the height of COVID-19 disruptions. Researchers explicitly noted the pandemic’s impact “may still be lingering” for these vulnerable students, underscoring failures in recovery strategies implemented over the past five years.

Remote Learning Created Inequitable Educational Collapse

School closures beginning in March 2020 triggered immediate academic declines, with fall 2020 assessments revealing sharp reading drops across grades one through six in a sample exceeding 950,000 students. National Assessment of Educational Progress data from 2022 showed a five-point reading score decline for nine-year-old students compared to 2020 levels, marking the largest drop since 1990. Students at the 10th and 25th percentiles experienced the steepest losses, exposing how remote learning disproportionately harmed lower-performing children. These students lacked consistent technology access and quiet study environments that advantaged their higher-performing peers, creating a two-tiered system that violated principles of equal educational opportunity conservatives have long defended.

Vulnerable Communities Bear Brunt of Policy Failures

Black and Hispanic students, along with those in suburban and Southern schools, suffered disproportionate reading losses that persist through 2025. Approximately 70 percent of nine-year-old students participated in remote learning during 2020-21, reducing instructional time and student engagement across the board. By 2022, only 32 percent of fourth graders tested proficient in reading, down from 34 percent in 2019, demonstrating system-wide regression. City school scores showed relative stability compared to suburban districts between 2020 and 2022, suggesting the policy response varied wildly by location. This inconsistency reflects the chaos of decentralized decision-making during lockdowns, where bureaucrats prioritized political optics over children’s educational needs and parental rights to choose in-person instruction.

Economic and Social Consequences Threaten Future Prosperity

Persistent reading deficits create cascading long-term problems beyond classroom performance. Students struggling with literacy face higher rates of college dropout, workforce disengagement, and reduced lifetime earnings, directly threatening American economic competitiveness. Short-term effects already manifest as widened grade-level readiness gaps, with affected children compounding barriers as they advance through elementary grades. The education sector now confronts sustained intervention demands requiring significant resource allocation, yet cost-effective solutions exist. Reading programs like Kids Read Now demonstrate 98 percent effectiveness compared to traditional summer school at just three percent of the cost, proving scalable alternatives work when bureaucratic obstacles are removed and parental choice is prioritized over union interests and administrative bloat.

Years After The Pandemic, Younger Students Still Have Far To Go In Reading, Report Says https://t.co/0xTok1qvWH

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 12, 2026

The Trump administration inherits an education crisis rooted in pandemic-era overreach that prioritized teacher union demands over children’s welfare. Federal and state policymakers must eliminate barriers to proven interventions, expand parental control over educational choices, and reject the failed remote learning model that turned schools into political battlegrounds. Academic recovery requires abandoning the very government overreach and one-size-fits-all mandates that created this disaster, restoring local control and accountability that conservatives recognize as essential to educational excellence and protecting our children’s futures from ideological experimentation.