- American students are failing to meet certain expectations on their reading skills due to school interruptions caused by the pandemic.
- When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, kindergartners missed most of the first grade, the foundational year for learning how to read.
- Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, added 30 minutes of class time a day for three years to regain ground lost from the coronavirus.
Michael Crowder stands nervously at the front of his third grade classroom, his mustard-yellow polo shirt buttoned to the top.
“Give us some vowels,” says his teacher, La’Neeka Gilbert-Jackson. His eyes search a chart that lists vowels, consonant pairs and word endings, but he doesn’t land on an answer. “Let’s help him out,” Gilbert-Jackson says.
“A-E-I-O-U,” she and the students say in unison.
Michael missed most of first grade, the foundational year for learning to read. It was the first fall of the pandemic, and for months Atlanta only offered school online. Michael’s mom had just had a baby, and there was no quiet place to study in their small apartment. He missed a good part of second grade, too. So, like most of his classmates at his Atlanta school, he isn’t reading at the level expected for a third grader.
And that poses an urgent problem.
Third grade is the last chance for Michael’s class to master reading with help from teachers before they face more rigorous expectations. If Michael and his classmates don’t read fluently by the time this school year ends, research shows they’re less likely to complete high school. Third grade has always been pivotal in a child’s academic life, but pandemic-fueled school interruptions have made it much harder. Nationally, third graders lost more ground in reading than kids in older grades, and they’ve been slower to catch up.
To address pandemic learning loss, Atlanta has been one of the only cities in the country to add class time — 30 minutes a day for three years. That’s more time for Gilbert-Jackson to explain the confusing ways…
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