Schools facing post-pandemic reading challenges

Five of the 19 students in teacher Chelsea Grant's third grade classroom are reading below grade level. When it's time to read aloud on a recent Friday, the students show vastly different levels of skill and confidence. Grant's students – "my babies" as she calls them –- spent the better part of the 2020-2021,school year learning from home. It was first grade, a crucial year for learning to read. Many are still far behind. Mounting evidence from around the country shows that students who spent more time learning remotely during the 2020-2021 school year, many of them Black and Latino, lost about half of an academic year of learning. That's twice as much as their peers who studied in person that year. Third graders are at a particularly delicate moment. This is the year when they must master reading or risk school failure. Everything after third grade will require reading comprehension to learn math, social studies and science. Students who don't read fluently by the end of third grade are more likely to struggle in the future, and even drop out, studies show. "I am grateful that all is well as it is. Right? Our students are thriving. I'm grateful to be able to say that and I think that that is because we have great teachers who, um, consider it a priority to partner with parents. Because we can't leave them out of the equation and that partnership looks different for every parent. Because every parent is doing the best that they can," said Crystal Jones, the principal of Beecher Hills Elementary School where Grant teaches. Grant's third graders may have a better chance than children in other cities to make up for that lost learning. Atlanta was one of the only districts to extend the school day as a response to the pandemic. Elementary school students attend seven hours of school, half an hour more than before the pandemic. Evidence from around the country shows that even when schools provide some of these services, such as optional after school tutoring or summer school, many parents aren't aren't using them.