New research from Georgia State University’s Georgia Policy Labs (GPL) reveals the pandemic continues to have long-lasting effects on students.

GPL and its Metro Atlanta Policy Lab for Education (MAPLE) have been at the forefront of examining the pandemic’s impact on students. In the latest update to its groundbreaking report released in May 2021, MAPLE researchers find that the return to near-universal in-person learning in school year 2021–22 did not yield substantial improvements in students’ average math or reading achievement growth. Moreover, students who were in grades 1–3 when the pandemic began in spring 2020 have fared worse in math over the last two school years than students who were in middle school.

“Our research has shown that the pandemic has had and continues to have widespread and unprecedented effects on student learning,” said Distinguished University Professor Tim Sass, faculty director of MAPLE. “We continue to recommend evidence-based recovery strategies that

target students who have experienced the greatest declines in national rankings and have been the slowest to recover.”

MAPLE recommends high-dosage, small-group tutoring to accelerate achievement growth for students most affected by the pandemic and school closures. While tutoring could be in-person or virtual, it is essential that it be provided during the regular school day. Voluntary programs and summer school initiatives have not been able to attract a large proportion of students who have fallen behind during the pandemic.

Since the pandemic began, MAPLE has worked closely with its school-district partners to help them make evidence-based decisions through a rapid-response research model that has provided timely and accessible results. MAPLE’s 2021 study was, at the time, one of only a few multi-district studies in the U.S. to estimate COVID-19-related impacts on actual students. The study also led to a broader research portfolio (highlighted below) that has generated important data-driven insights for district leaders and other stakeholders and informed post-pandemic recovery efforts.