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[quote=Anonymous]The kids who are now finishing 7th grade were really affected by Covid. Usually schools do testing and screening for reading disabilities during the spring of first grade for any kid who isn't reading fluently.  Because of the shutdown all of the kids in 1st grade missed that testing.  Then school was closed for 2nd grade and only virtual so there was no testing or intervention. In 3rd grade, schools were still catching up and waited to do testing because they wanted to see who was just behind and who would catch up. So a lot of the testing didn't get done until spring of 4th grade. This meant that you had kids starting 5th grade who couldn't read. Huge huge gaps. These kids missed a vital window for intervention and learning to read.  There's a similar story for math gaps.  And I think many parents who might have been more proactive in other circumstances were so underwater with the pandemic that they didn't get their kids resources sooner.

I think this cohort is even further impacted because before covid, many districts were using the Lucy Calkins Readers' Workshop to teach reading, so there were more kids than you'd expect who were really struggling.  That whole curriculum has been disproven now and schools have added phonics.  But the same kids who are impacted by Covid at the end of 1st grade also weren't taught to read before the pandemic because of the Lucy Calkins curriculum.

Our middle school even added an entire class in 6th grade called "Reading" to try to teach 6th graders who couldn't yet read fluently.  The vice principal explained that the class was being added to remediate gaps from both the Lucy Calkins curriculum and the pandemic.[/quote]

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