Final Feature Rough Draft

  On the wings of the COVID-19 insanity, one group has been consistently left behind: students. With no vaccine available to them for months, and the pressure to reopen schools despite a nationwide pandemic, students have had to bear their fair share of troubles locked away in their homes, unable to socialize or be effectively educated in person. Now, with schools returning to in-person classes en masse, educators are finding that there may be some long term effects to missing so much time away from each other. COVID-19 learning loss is affecting students across the nation both in their social-emotional development and in their education levels, experts say. Learning loss is a phenomenon causing educators to take a good hard look at the foundations of our educational system, and suggest if it is time for a change. 

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown hit the United States mid-March 2020. Schools and businesses closed, and many parents were forced to become extremely involved in their childrens’ education, either home-schooling or going to remote learning where kids invariably needed assistance with using a computer and other various technical difficulties. Except, some parents were not able to provide the support their children needed, instead having to work during a pandemic to support their families. Children from low-income families tended to be harder hit by COVID-19 learning loss, according to PACE (Policy Analysis for California Education).

While many students worked hard to stay on task and on target through a pandemic, many did not have the support behind them to really push them to continue their education, with some students attending no online classes and many attending less than 15% of their online class sessions, per the British Journal of Education. Now that schools are returning to in-person learning, the gap between students is becoming more obvious now, and the effects are more far reaching than we could have ever imagined.

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