Although most of them were still in diapers when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, today’s early elementary students didn’t make it through the global catastrophe unscathed.
A new analysis from NWEA, an assessment company, suggests that these children are experiencing learning disruptions even now.
While kindergarten achievement levels in math and reading largely held steady during and since the pandemic, by first and second grade, students are performing below pre-pandemic averages, according to an analysis of NWEA’s Map Growth assessment data from spring 2017 to spring 2025. In math, at least, first and second graders have shown slow, incremental progress. Gaps in reading achievement, however, seem stubbornly stalled.
The performance dips in first and second grade are similar to those seen in older grades, said Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth modeling and data analytics at NWEA, who co-led the research.
A new analysis from NWEA found that while kindergarten achievement levels have held steady in math and reading, students in first and second grade are still performing below pre-pandemic levels in both subjects. (NWEA Research)
“The general pattern of stagnation and lack of recovery in reading is very similar in first and second grade as grades three to eight,” Kuhfeld said, adding that a slow recovery in math is also observed in the later grades. “It’s very parallel across, basically, all the grades except for kindergarten.”
So what’s happening to students as they matriculate from kindergarten to first grade to cause a performance drop?
“That’s the big mystery of the results,” Kuhfeld said.
She was willing to speculate about the cause, leaning on anecdotal evidence from kindergarten teachers and elementary school leaders.
Chronic absenteeism rates in kindergarten, which are often higher than in any other grade before high school, may mean some students aren’t getting adequate instructional time, Kuhfeld offered, ultimately standing in the way of them grasping the foundational reading and math skills typically acquired in kindergarten.
And many kindergarten teachers have reported that students are showing up with more nascent social and emotional skills than their peers in prior years. They have less experience with important life skills such as sharing, cooperating and self-regulating.
“Teachers are spending more time having to teach how to behave in a kindergarten classroom — that would normally be the purview of preschool teachers,” Kuhfeld said. “This time spent on behavioral management and behavioral regulation, cumulatively, could be affecting achievement.”
At Western Hills Primary School in Fort Worth, Texas, where students’ MAP Growth assessment results generally align with what NWEA has found nationally, principal Andrea Johnson said both factors could be at play.
“We’re seeing kids who, if they don’t reach immediate success, we see them dysregulate,” said Johnson, whose school serves students in pre-K through first grade. “They struggle.”
At Western Hills Primary School in Texas, kindergarten and first grade performance in math and reading on NWEA’s Map Growth assessment generally mirror national trends. (Courtesy of Andrea Johnson)
She believes that may be a latent impact of the pandemic on these younger students. Many of them had extra time at home with parents and caregivers, when early care and education programs were closed.
“They’re used to someone being close and someone solving their problems for them,” Johnson said. “We talk a lot about productive struggle. You’ve gotta let them do it. Give them that mentality, where they’ve gotta connect to that struggle.”
She has definitely seen high rates of absenteeism among students in pre-K and kindergarten, she added.
“I think they think, ‘pre-K and kinder, they don’t really matter that much,’” Johnson said, adding that she often finds herself trying to communicate to families how crucial those years are for future learning and development.
Most measures of post-pandemic recovery have examined the impacts on students in later grades, making NWEA’s analysis a rare snapshot of students in grades K-2.
Curriculum Associates, a curriculum and assessment provider, has also evaluated math and reading performance among students in the early grades, finding some similarities and key differences from NWEA’s results.
NWEA’s Map Growth assessment and Curriculum Associates’ i-Ready Inform assessment are both widely used in U.S. schools, reaching a combined 19 million K-8 students. Both measure student achievement in math and reading, but they differ in approach.
Kristen Huff, head of measurement at Curriculum Associates, pointed out that these two assessments have distinct designs and methodologies — and that they are administered to different samples — which may account for variations in findings.
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“From the big picture, we’re seeing the same thing,” Huff said. “Students today who were not in school — some were babies — when the pandemic hit are not performing at the same level as their pre-pandemic peers in either reading or math.”
But in a report published in July 2025, Curriculum Associates actually found that students in kindergarten are seeing achievement level drops in both math and reading, and that declining math performance in the early grades is “more drastic” than in reading.
At a high level, she said, both sets of findings send a similar message, which is that America’s children are not seeing the type of recovery needed to reach pre-pandemic achievement levels.
“It opens up the question of what is happening,” Huff said. “We can no longer, in my opinion, say that that disrupted learning in 2020 and 2021 is the sole or primary cause of what we’re seeing. There is a larger, systemic issue — or issues — that are impacting this.”
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