The schooling disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to reverberate across the K-12 educational system more than a year after schools closed for in-person instruction. In this study, we examined the aftermath of these disruptions by modeling student achievement trends prior to and during the pandemic, with particular focus on growth in 2020-2021. The data included test scores from 4.9 million U.S. students in Grades 3 through 8. Although the average student demonstrated positive gains in math and reading during the 2020-2021 school year, students were still behind typical (prepandemic) averages by spring 2021 (0.16 to 0.26 standard deviations behind in math and 0.06 to 0.11 standard deviations behind in reading). Furthermore, growth in math was more variable than in prior years, and much of the gains occurred among initially high-performing students pulling further ahead. Findings support the theory that the pandemic left students behind academically across the board while also worsening existing educational inequities.

在学校关闭进行面对面教学一年多后，由于 COVID-19 大流行导致的学校教育中断继续在 K-12 教育系统中产生影响。在这项研究中，我们通过对大流行之前和期间的学生成绩趋势进行建模来检查这些中断的后果，特别关注 2020-2021 年的增长。数据包括 490 万美国 3 至 8 年级学生的考试成绩。尽管在 2020-2021 学年，学生的平均数学和阅读成绩有所提高，但到 2021 年春季，学生仍落后于典型（大流行前）平均值（0.16 至数学落后 0.26 个标准差，阅读落后 0.06 到 0.11 个标准差）。此外，数学的增长比往年更加多变，大部分的进步发生在最初表现优异的学生身上，他们越走越远。调查结果支持这样一种理论，即大流行使学生在学业上全面落后，同时也加剧了现有的教育不平等。