Young kids missed the pandemic's school disruptions. Their reading
scores are still behind
[March 10, 2026]
By MORIAH BALINGIT
WASHINGTON (AP) — When COVID-19 wrought havoc on society in early 2020,
today's youngest schoolchildren were infants or yet to be born. Now in
their early school years, researchers are beginning to see how the
pandemic years have shaped their education, even though many had yet to
set foot in a classroom when it began.
First and second graders continue to perform worse than their
pre-pandemic counterparts on math and reading tests, according to a
report published Tuesday by the education assessment and research group
NWEA. But while math scores have inched up every year, reading scores
remain stagnant, the report shows. The data suggests the slump in
academic performance is not rooted only in instructional disruption.
Broader societal shifts might be at play.
In the youngest students' failure to recover, "there’s something kind of
systemic here happening ... within schools and outside of schools,” said
Megan Kuhfeld, a researcher at NWEA. “We can’t pinpoint one specific
cause.”
The pandemic's effects on older children's academic achievement are
well-documented. COVID-19 forced kids out of classrooms and into online
learning. Students lost out on face time with instructors, their mental
health suffered in the isolation, and their well-being deteriorated as
some families endured hardship. Some schoolchildren stopped showing up
to school altogether.
The federal government gave billions of dollars to school districts to
help students catch up — with mixed results. In 2024, reading scores for
fourth- and eighth-graders continued a downward slide, according to the
National Assessment of Educational Progress. Math scores, however,
trended upward.
Testing for younger kids is less common, so the NWEA report offers
insights into the depth of the academic disruption. It's based on
assessments given to students in the 2024-25 school year.
Kindergarten scores for math and science remained roughly the same
throughout the pandemic. First and second graders are trending in the
same way as their older peers. Math and reading scores are still falling
short of pre-pandemic levels, although math scores are slowly rising.
Reading scores have remained roughly the same since the spring of 2021,
when the first full school year in the pandemic was wrapping up.
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Books sit on shelves in an elementary school library in suburban
Atlanta, on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Hakim Wright Sr., File)
It's unclear what is depressing the scores. Kuhfeld pointed to
emerging data showing that fewer parents are reading to their
children, an activity that has been shown to boost literacy. A 2024
survey of parents in the United Kingdom found that less than half of
children under 5 were regularly read to, a 20-point drop from a
dozen years prior.
In Minnetonka Public Schools outside Minneapolis, school leaders say
that while reading scores dipped during the pandemic, they have
since recovered. Teachers now focus more on phonics and also
regularly assess students on literacy. Students who are behind
receive extra help on the parts of reading where they struggle. A
student who has difficulty reading aloud might be asked to read to
one of their classmates, for example.
But some things are out of the district's control. During the
pandemic, Associate Superintendent Amy LaDue said, many young
children were homebound. They missed out on activities like going to
museums and playing with other children, which are helpful for
language and literacy development. She believes that's one factor
that continues to hamper kids, especially those from low-income
families.
“These kids weren't in school when the pandemic happened, but (some)
were ... in early childhood and preschool,” LaDue said. “Their
opportunities ... to have those experiences outside of their home
that build literacy skills and to apply them with peers probably
were impacted because they were home.”
Along with interventions at school, a growing number of states and
cities are investing in pre-kindergarten to help children with early
literacy. California has introduced universal pre-kindergarten, and
New York City is expanding its pre-kindergarten program to
2-year-olds, giving toddlers an early start on learning. New Mexico
has made child care free for nearly all families.
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