Low achievers experienced larger initial pandemic impacts and less improvement during 2021-22¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2022 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2027: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Students in the bottom decile of pre-pandemic achievement had larger initial impacts at the pandemic's onset and made less improvement during 2021-22 than other students. → Karyn Lewis 2022

Evidence¶

Karyn Lewis 2022¶

Karyn Lewis, Megan Kuhfeld, Meredith Langi, Scott J. Peters, Erin Fahle. (2022). The widening achievement divide during COVID-19. NWEA Research brief. https://www.nwea.org/research/publication/the-widening-achievement-divide-during-covid-19/

q2 · i? · associational · r2

Longitudinal follow-up of a subset of 1 million students whose pre-pandemic achievement placed them in the top or bottom decile relative to national pre-pandemic norms. The brief reports "Low achievers experienced larger initial impacts at the onset of the pandemic and less improvement during 2021-22."

"Low achievers experienced larger initial impacts at the onset of the pandemic and less improvement during 2021-22."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The achievement divide between high and low achievers widened significantly over the last two years of the pandemic — related
• Pandemic-period growth varied by pre-pandemic achievement status: higher achievers' gains were more consistent with projected normative growth while lower achievers more often fell short — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Pandemic-period gains from fall 2019 to fall 2021 fell short of pre-pandemic growth norms — related
• End-of-2021-22 student achievement remained lower than a typical year, with larger declines in math (5 to 10 percentile points) than reading (2 to 4 percentile points) — related
• Student achievement at the start of the 2021-22 school year lagged pre-pandemic norms, especially in math — related
• The 2021-22 COVID learning study investigated fall 2021 achievement versus pre-pandemic fall 2019 levels and fall 2019 to fall 2021 gains versus normative growth expectations — related
• COVID-19 learning deficits arose early in the pandemic and have neither closed nor substantially widened since then — reports the opposite
• School-aged children experienced a substantial overall learning deficit during the COVID-19 pandemic (pooled d = −0.14), equivalent to about 35% of a school year's learning — related
• AI-supported PBL offerings showed higher A-rates and fewer low grades than pre-integration control offerings when including the COVID-19 year — related