When COVID-19 caused major upheaval in society in early 2020, the youngest children who are now in school were still infants or had not yet been born. Now that they are in their first years of school, researchers have begun to understand how the pandemic years have affected their education, even though many of them had never entered a classroom when the pandemic began.

According to a report published Tuesday by the education assessment and research group NWEA, first- and second-grade students continue to perform worse than their pre-pandemic peers in math and reading tests. However, while math scores have increased slightly year after year, reading scores have remained almost unchanged. The data suggest that the decline in academic performance is not linked only to disruptions in learning during the pandemic; broader social changes may also have played a role.

According to Megan Kuhfeld, a researcher at NWEA, the fact that the youngest students are not managing to recover indicates that “something more systemic is happening, both inside schools and outside them.”

“We cannot identify a single specific cause,” she said.

The effects of the pandemic on the academic achievements of older children are already well documented. COVID-19 forced students to leave classrooms and shift to online learning. They lost direct contact with teachers, their mental health worsened due to isolation, and their well-being weakened as some families experienced economic hardship. Some students even stopped attending school altogether.

The federal government allocated billions of dollars to school districts to help students recover lost learning, but the results have been mixed. In 2024, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, reading scores for fourth- and eighth-grade students continued to decline, while math scores showed improvement.

Testing for younger children is less common, so the NWEA report provides a clearer picture of the depth of academic disruption. It is based on assessments conducted with students during the 2024–2025 school year.

Kindergarten results in math and science remained largely the same throughout the pandemic. First- and second-grade students are following the same trend as their older peers: math and reading scores have not yet reached pre-pandemic levels, although math is gradually improving. Reading scores have remained almost unchanged since the spring of 2021, when the first full school year during the pandemic ended.

It is still unclear what is causing these lower scores. Kuhfeld mentioned new data showing that fewer and fewer parents are reading to their children—an activity known to help develop reading skills. A 2024 survey of parents in the United Kingdom found that fewer than half of children under the age of five are regularly read to by their parents, a drop of 20 percentage points compared with about a dozen years earlier.

In the Minnetonka public schools near Minneapolis, school leaders say that although reading scores fell during the pandemic, they have since recovered. Teachers now focus more on phonics (teaching the relationship between sounds and letters) and regularly assess students’ reading skills. Students who fall behind receive additional help in the areas of reading where they struggle most. For example, a student who finds it difficult to read aloud may be invited to read in front of a classmate.

However, some factors are beyond the control of the school district. During the pandemic, said Deputy Superintendent Amy LaDue, many young children stayed at home for long periods. They missed activities such as visits to museums or playing with other children—experiences that help develop language and reading skills. She believes this is one of the reasons that continues to hinder children, especially those from low-income families.

“These children were not yet in school when the pandemic happened, but some of them were in early childhood or preschool age,” LaDue said. “Their opportunities to have experiences outside the home that develop reading skills and to practice them with peers were likely limited because they stayed at home.”

In addition to interventions in schools, a growing number of states and cities are investing in preschool programs to help children develop early reading skills. California has introduced universal preschool, while New York City is expanding its preschool program to include two-year-olds, giving them an earlier start in learning. In New Mexico, childcare has become free for nearly all families.