Post-pandemic, student academic recovery remains elusive

Key points:

Five years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, academic recovery has stalled nationwide, and achievement gaps have widened, according to the State of Student Learning 2025 report from from Curriculum Associates.

The report offers one of the most comprehensive looks at Grades K–8 student performance in reading and mathematics, based on data from close to 14 million students who took the i-Ready Diagnostic assessment in the 2024–2025 school year.

The report shows that most students have not yet reached pre-pandemic achievement levels, and some are falling even further behind. The report does find some bright spots: Some historically underserved schools, especially majority-Black schools, are seeing modest, positive gains in both reading and mathematics. However, those gains have not yet translated into closing longstanding disparities.

“This report shows that disrupted schooling due to the pandemic continues to impact student learning, particularly for students who are in early grades, are lower performing, or are from historically underserved communities,” said Kristen Huff, head of measurement at Curriculum Associates. “Academic recovery has never been one-size-fits-all, and these results reaffirm the importance of nuanced, data-informed approaches. Above all, they underscore the vital work educators are doing every day to meet students where they are and help them move forward.”

Key findings

• Academic progress has plateaued. Since spring 2023, national achievement has remained flat. While many students are growing at pre-pandemic rates, that growth isn’t closing the gap caused by pandemic disruptions.
• The achievement gap has grown in many cases. Students who were already behind, particularly those scoring in the bottom 10th percentile, continue to fall behind, while top-performing students have often recovered or surpassed their pre-pandemic levels.
• Younger students experienced greater learning losses. Even though they were not yet in school during the pandemic, elementary students, especially in Grades K and 1, saw the largest drops in achievement after the pandemic. 
• Vulnerable populations are experiencing uneven recovery. The report shows widening gaps between the nation’s highest and lowest performers. Across most grades, the differences between higher and lower percentiles have increased over time.

A data-driven, nationwide look

The 2025 report examines data through the critical years pre- and post-pandemic, from spring 2019 to spring 2025. Using a nationally representative sample of more than 11.7 million reading and 13.4 million mathematics assessments, the research examines:

• Grade-level placement: how many students are performing at or below grade level
• Scale scores by percentile: how learning differs across performance groups
• Annual growth: whether students are making enough academic progress during the school year to recover lost ground

The findings reinforce that targeted support is needed to ensure every student can thrive academically, especially younger students, lower-performing students, and historically underserved communities.

This press release originally appeared online.

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