Massive learning setbacks show COVID's sweeping toll on U.S. kids: AP

A woman dressed in green pulls a wagon with children in Chicago, the United States, on March 12, 2022. (Photo by Vincent D. Johnson/Xinhua)

Kids aren't doing well, especially those who were at highest risk before the pandemic. Many children need significant intervention, and advocates and researchers say the United States isn't doing enough.

NEW YORK, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- An analysis about the scale of the disruption to American kids' education found the average student lost more than half a school year of learning in math and nearly a quarter of a school year in reading, with some district averages slipping by more than double those amounts, or worse, reported The Associated Press (AP) last week.

"Online learning played a major role, but students lost significant ground even where they returned quickly to schoolhouses, especially in math scores in low-income communities," said the report.

Some educators have objected to the very idea of measuring learning loss after a crisis that has killed more than 1 million Americans. Reading and math scores don't tell the entire story about what's happening with a child, but they're one of the only aspects of children's development reliably measured nationwide, according to the report.

Kids aren't doing well, especially those who were at highest risk before the pandemic. The data show many children need significant intervention, and advocates and researchers say the United States isn't doing enough, it said.

The amount of learning that students lost -- or gained, in rare cases -- over the last three years varied widely. Poverty and time spent in remote learning affected learning loss, and learning losses were greater in districts that remained online longer, it added.