COVID-19-Induced School Closures and Disadvantaged Children’s Post-COVID Academic Growth: A Longitudinal Cohort Study

November 2025

This study draws on unique, repeated-measures data on a diverse (51% female; 53% Latine, 22% Black, 11% White), low-income cohort of children (N = 680) whose academic skills were assessed before and after COVID-19-induced school closures. Longitudinal models predicted changes in children’s literacy and math trajectories from before school closures (ages 4-6; 2017-2019) to after school reopening (ages 8-11; 2021-2023) and tested whether children’s remote learning participation moderated these changes. Results suggest that academic growth stagnated during school closures, with “losses” ranging from 3 months of literacy growth to 14 months of math growth. Remote learning participation was protective for math only. After schools re-opened, children’s growth rates were slower than they had been prior to school closures but bounced back to what we would expect based on their ages. These findings suggest that while being out of school resulted in stagnation in learning, once students were back in school, normal developmental growth in learning resumed, highlighting the resilience of students’ ability to learn when in school.

Keywords

COVID-19; school closures; remote learning; math; literacy; low-income

Education level

K-12 Education

Topics

Student Learning