The Wall Street Journal reports today about a new study on learning loss from the pandemic:
In kindergarten, students tested in 2023 were about 2 percentage points less likely to begin school at grade level in both math and reading, compared with 2019, data compiled by the testing company Curriculum Associates show. Scores also remained below prepandemic levels in the first and second grades.
Kindergarten students weren't even in school during the pandemic, so obviously their learning loss isn't due to remote learning. This is yet more evidence that remote learning wasn't the culprit for learning losses around the globe. But we still don't know what the cause was.
Some number of them would have been in pre-school, though who knows whether that would have been enough to affect an aggregate like that. But I'd venture a guess that many, many home routines and environments were upset and knocked off-track enough to affect how well kids could focus and stay on track educationally. If home environment matters, this period would have been a big test of it in a whole lot of homes.
I noted the same, and pre-school isn't the collective babysitting it was when we (or at least I) were kids. It's a lot more focused on learning through play rather than distracting through play, and from my own experience with my daughter she was given books to "read" and learned her alphabet and a good number of sight words before heading to kindergarten. The same was true for many of her friends, and we were in a diverse community with publicly funded pre-K and significant numbers in poverty and/or immigrant families.
Part of that was her mother and I reading to her constantly and modeling it ourselves, as well as Bob's books!, but it was also pre-K heling out.
About half of kids go to preschool (https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/08/preschool-enrollment.html) so definitely enough to have an effect.
Maybe there is some effect from negative effects of having had COVID-19?
If a significant share had COVID-19 and there is a deleterious effect on cognitive ability from this then that could lead to a small reduction in test scores for the entire group.
Lol, my thoughts exactly.
Anyone considered the highly contagious neurological disease that caused the pandemic as a possible factor in learning loss?
My daughter went to pre-K for two years (not nursery school, but pre-K with actual teachers and assessments) as do most kids in New Jersey these days. Studies show kids going to pre-K or other early education programs ahead of kindergarten do better in kindergarten, especially at lower income levels (some of that is getting regular meals). Those sessions were just as disrupted as any higher level classes.
Our entire civilization was disrupted. I see no reason that would somehow ignore even a very little kid.
Also how much does 2% actually matter?
Right? Kids and animals pick up quickly when there is distress in the household. And there was a lot of distress in basically every household.
Not every household. I think the day-to-day routine is stressful, and the pandemic was a great excuse to take a break from that. Life during Covid was more boring, but not more stressful. (If any of us had gotten seriously ill, that would have been different.)
Yeah, is 2% meaningful?
Whats the typical variation from year to year?
The whole world was really stressed out -- if kids didn't lose someone in their family, maybe a parent or grandparent got really sick and was in the hospital for a time; families lost work and tensions rose as finances got tight. And on and on.
What would be interesting to see is whether major geo-political stressors like this have had a similar effect in the past, say in the couple of years after 9/11 when we all thought it was only a matter of time before we were killed in some terrorist attack.
I’m convinced it’s all the extra screen time. Parents were at the end of their rope and used Netflix and TV as the babysitter so they could get their work done. This might even affect pre-school aged children more than older kids because their little brains are still so undeveloped. They get trained to need tons of stimulus and can’t do deep thinking or listen to the teacher when they reach school. And I don’t think this will go away. In my own experience, it has been difficult to scale back screens once we developed (bad) routines. So I would sadly expect this trend to persist for years.
Ok, a bit off topic but these are the Covid guidelines for teachers in California:
The California Department of Public Health
(CDPH) has issued new COVID isolation guidance which ends the requirement to isolate for five-days after testing positive. The new guidance is listed below:
• If you test positive and have no symptoms:
• You can come to work.
• Wear a mask for 10 days after testing positive.
• If you test positive and have symptoms (fever and/or feel ill):
• Stay home until you have not had a fever for 24 hours without using fever reducing medication AND other COVID-1
9 symptoms are mild and improving.
• Wear a mask for 10 days after symptoms start.
I suppose in less liberal states they expect teachers with Covid to come to work unmasked.
While there's academic related learning at a young age, the primary benefit I noticed was in the time spent learning how manage themselves in classes. Being able to focus on tasks in a social environment. All the basics of managing their work, their supplies, their time. How to engage with peers and adults. By 1st grade, they are able to lean into academics more easily.
Disrupt that time spent learning how to learn in a class and they'll be less able to concentrate on the subject matter.