A teacher-friend of mine recently expressed sadness over the stagnation of her students. Before the pandemic she could see students steadily gaining ground. Now she was seeing zero progress on their tests—and maybe even some declines. Tests aren’t everything, she admitted, yet after struggling through online teaching and masks and other troubles, she was disheartened to see ground being lost.
Unfortunately, it appears my friend is just one of many teachers experiencing such discouragement. The effects of the pandemic are beginning to show up, and the results aren’t pretty, particularly in the area of reading for younger students. The New York Times reports, “If children do not become competent readers by the end of elementary school, the risks are ‘pretty dramatic,’” according to Dr. Tiffany Hogan, the director of a speech and language literacy lab in Boston. “Poor readers are more likely to drop out of high school, earn less money as adults and become involved in the criminal justice system.”
