During the pandemic, learning in America appears to have slowed more than in places such as England and Spain. Young pupils in Sweden made good progress throughout the tumult; in parts of Japan pupils have already made up losses
through some of the rich-world’s longest school closures, America’s pupils have fallen far behind. Nationally representative data released by the government on October 24th show that, since the start of the pandemic, scores in reading and maths have dropped back to levels of 20 years ago. Numeracy has suffered its biggest decline since comparable testing began in the early 1990s.
. Although lawmakers have sent them historic amounts of money, not all of it is being well spent. Over the summer analysts at, a test provider, reported that learning is starting to recover. But they guess it could take three to five years for grades in elementary schools across the country to return to pre-pandemic levels, and longer for older kids.
Yet some good ideas are going begging. Not many districts have chosen to add hours to the school day or weeks to the school calendar, according to’s study. That is a missed opportunity: in many bits of America the school year is short by international standards. Schools are also swiftly discovering that there are not nearly enough temporary tutors and substitute teachers available for cleverer catch-up schemes to work on the scale that is required.
Many districts are spending big dollops of their relief money on infrastructure, with the government’s blessing. That includes new and improved air conditioning; sprightlier classrooms and more computers. These kinds of projects have long been demanded by unions and in most cases will benefit children. But they hardly seem good ways of tackling the emergency at hand.