The Morning: Math, reading and Covid - frederick.lapides@gmail.com

February 11, 2025

Good morning. We’re covering a new report on schools after the pandemic — as well Trump’s executive power, climate change funding and golden retrievers.

$A fourth grader uses colorful stickers to practice fractions.$

Adam Perez for The New York Times

‘Paying the price’

Schoolchildren in Massachusetts, Ohio and Pennsylvania are still about half a year behind typical pre-Covid reading levels. In Florida and Michigan, the gap is about three-quarters of a year. In Maine, Oregon and Vermont, it is close to a full year.

This morning, a group of academic researchers released their latest report card on pandemic learning loss, and it shows a disappointingly slow recovery in almost every state. School closures during Covid set children back, and most districts have not been able to make up the lost ground.

One reason is a rise in school absences that has continued long after Covid stopped dominating daily life. “The pandemic may have been the earthquake, but heightened absenteeism is the tsunami and it’s still rolling through schools,” Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist and a member of the research team, told me.

In today’s newsletter, I will walk through four points from the report, with charts created by my colleague Ashley Wu. I’ll also tell you the researchers’ recommendations for what schools should do now.

1. State variation

The new report — from scholars at Dartmouth, Harvard and Stanford — compares performance across states, based on math and reading tests that fourth and eighth graders take. (A separate report, on national trends, came out last month.)

Today’s report shows a wide variety of outcomes. In the states that have made up the most ground, fourth and eighth graders were doing nearly as well last spring as their predecessors were doing five years earlier.

But the overall picture is not good. In a typical state, students last spring were still about half a year behind where their predecessors were in 2019. In a few states, the gap approaches a full year.

Here are the changes in reading performance:

A chart shows the changes in reading performance between 2019 and 2024. Top 10 and bottom 10 states by performance are shown. In Louisiana, the state that had the lowest losses, students in 2024 outperformed their 2019 scores in reading. In Maine, the state that lost the most, reading scores in 2024 were about a whole grade level lower than they were in 2019.

Source: Education Recovery Scorecard | By The New York Times

2. A blue-red divide

Political leaders in red and blue America made different decisions during the pandemic. Many public schools in heavily Democratic areas stayed closed for almost a year — from the spring of 2020 until the spring of 2021. In some Republican areas, by contrast, schools remained closed for only the spring of 2020.

This pattern helps explains a partisan gap in learning loss: Students in blue states have lost more ground since 2019. The differences are especially large in math. Eight of the 10 states that have lost the most ground since 2019 voted Democratic in recent presidential elections. And eight of the 10 states with the smallest math shortfalls voted Republican.

A chart shows the changes in math performance between 2019 and 2024. Top 10 and bottom 10 states by performance are shown. In Alabama and Louisiana, the states with the lowest losses, students in 2024 outperformed their 2019 scores in math. In Virginia, the state that lost the most, math scores in 2024 were about a whole grade level lower than they were in 2019.

Source: Education Recovery Scorecard | By The New York Times

I know some readers may wonder if blue states had bigger declines simply because they started from a higher point. After all, the states with the best reading and math scores have long been mostly blue. But that doesn’t explain the post-pandemic patterns. For example, New Jersey (a blue state) and Utah (a red state) both had high math scores in 2019, but New Jersey has fared much worse since then.

3. More inequality

Pandemic learning loss has exacerbated class gaps and racial gaps. Lower-income students are even further behind upper-income students than they were five years ago, and Black students and Latino students are even further behind Asian and white students. “Children, especially poor children, are paying the price for the pandemic,” Kane said.

Other research, by Rebecca Jack of the University of Nebraska and Emily Oster of Brown, points to two core reasons. First, schools with a large number of poor students and Black or Latino students were more likely to remain closed for long periods of time. Second, a day of missed school tends to have a larger effect on disadvantaged students than others.

In the years before Covid, the U.S. education system had impressive success in reducing learning inequality, as I explained in a 2022 newsletter. But Covid erased much of that progress. “Educational inequality grew during the pandemic and remains larger now than in 2019,” Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist and co-author of the new report, said.

4. How to recover

The authors of the report note that some school districts, including in poorer areas, have largely recovered from Covid learning loss. Among the standouts are Compton, Calif.; Ector County, Texas, which includes Odessa; Union City, N.J.; and Rapides Parish, La. The authors urge more study of these districts to understand what they’re doing right.

Early evidence suggests that after-school tutoring and summer school, subsidized by federal aid, made a difference. Intensive efforts to reduce absenteeism can also help.

One problem, the authors write, is that many schools have not been honest with parents about learning loss: “Since early in the recovery, the overwhelming majority of parents have been under the false impression that their children were unaffected.”

THE LATEST NEWS

Trump’s Executive Power

A federal judge said that the White House had defied his order to unfreeze billions of dollars in federal grants. The ruling sets up a power struggle between the judicial and executive branches.
Many of President Trump’s orders seem to violate laws. Some legal scholars argue that the U.S. is in the early stages of a constitutional crisis.
Trump often muses about running for a third term, which the Constitution does not allow. He tells advisers it’s a tactic to grab attention and irritate Democrats

A judge intervened in Trump’s order to halt medical research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The judge restored the funding in 22 states.
The government told the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the world’s leading climate science agencies, to identify grants related to global warming. Some are afraid it will cancel the grants.
The White House insulated Elon Musk’s cost-cutting effort, known as DOGE, from public records requests.
Trump fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics.

Trump’s Tariffs

An aerial scene of two people walking through a steel market.

A wholesale steel market in Shenyang, China. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum imports from any country.
Domestic steel manufacturers, who struggle to compete with cheap foreign metals, welcomed the tariffs. The move will hit China particularly hard.
Trump enacted similar tariffs in his first term. Studies found they helped U.S. metal makers but hurt the broader economy because of higher prices.

MORNING READS

A golden retriever is seated and a human's hand is pushing up its chin.

Boujee, a prizewinning golden retriever. Callaghan O’Hare for The New York Times

Westminster Dog Show: Can a golden retriever win? History says no.

Ask Well: “Should dinner be the smallest meal of the day?”

Valentine’s Day: A children’s author recommends books about love that won’t make you cringe.

Ask Vanessa: “What can I wear to a job interview besides a boring suit?”

Most clicked yesterday: The 50 best movies on Netflix right now.

Lives Lived: Monica Getz was married to the jazz star Stan Getz for 24 tumultuous years, during which he battled addiction and physically abused her. She devoted herself to reforming divorce laws and supporting other women like her. She died at 90.

SPORTS

N.B.A.: Luka Dončić debuted for the Los Angeles Lakers after his trade from the Dallas Mavericks, scoring 14 points in a win over the Utah Jazz.

Super Bowl: The Eagles’ win over the Chiefs drew a projected 126 million viewers, Fox Sports said, a record for the game.

Halftime show: A performer who was part of Kendrick Lamar’s act will be banned from all N.F.L. stadiums and events for life after unfurling a flag bearing the words “Sudan” and “Gaza” during the show.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Linn Fritz

Ratings are critical to the television business; they help determine how much media companies can charge for commercials. But people now watch so many programs at so many different times in so many different ways that the industry can no longer agree on the best measurement. Read about the scramble for a solution.

The Morning: Math, reading and Covid -