A steady stream of recent research has reported on the pandemic’s disparate effects on education. Unsurprisingly, lost learning time hurt children, particularly those who needed the most support. A December 2025 Brookings study by Lauren Bauer and Eileen Powell is among the first to look specifically at the learning impacts based on grade level at the time of the disruption. Their results may come as a surprise.
When schools shut down in spring 2020, older students presumably had greater reading fluency and technology skills compared to younger cohorts. In theory, this might make them better prepared to continue learning during the disruption. A teacher might check in on Zoom, then send the kids over to Khan Academy for a math video, then on to IXL for practice problems. It’s easier to prescribe this computer-based work to a 12-year-old than to a kindergartener who can’t read and is trying independently to navigate a digital learning platform.
The researchers track student cohorts based on 2019–20 grade level, following their proficiency rates on state standardized tests. For example, fourth graders in 2019–20 are followed as fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Their proficiency rates are compared to pre-pandemic cohorts at the same point in their education. Students in fourth through seventh grade as of spring 2020 have both pre- and post-pandemic data to compare against the pre-pandemic cohorts. Younger students have only post-pandemic data, which are compared to the pre-pandemic benchmarks. The authors focus on proficiency data through eighth grade in 28 states selected due to their consistent standardized tests from 2015–16 to 2024–25.
The results reveal a clear pattern: Older students have struggled more to recover from learning loss, especially in math.
When testing resumed in the spring of 2021, all cohorts showed big drops. In math, proficiency was about 9 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels. In the following years, results diverged: The older the student in 2019–20, the more persistent the learning loss. By 2025, the youngest kids—in preschool through second grade in 2019–20—were at or close to pre-pandemic proficiency levels. Pandemic third graders showed similar initial gaps in their first round of standardized testing (grade 4, 2021) but rebounded to match the pre-pandemic cohorts by eighth grade.
Meanwhile, the older elementary and middle school students never fully caught up. Pandemic fourth graders tested above the pre-pandemic average proficiency rates in 2019 (52 percent) but dropped to 36 percent in fifth grade, remaining below pre-pandemic cohorts as eighth graders. Differences in English proficiency rates are not as extreme as in math, narrowing between cohorts by the end of middle school but still below the pre-pandemic average for the pandemic fourth through seventh graders.
Younger students had more time between the initial disruption and eighth grade testing, perhaps explaining the divergent results. This explanation, however, does not change the fact that pandemic fourth through seventh graders finished middle school with lower proficiency rates than their pre-pandemic peers.
The data support what a lot of teachers already know: Those pandemic fourth graders are now high school sophomores, and many are missing critical foundational skills, especially in math. National data confirm the trend observed in the Brookings study of statewide tests—this cohort scored 8 points below 2019 levels on the 2024 NAEP in eighth grade math. The pattern also matches observations from university professors like those at UCSD, who say many college students lack middle school-level math skills. Coupled with the elimination of standardized testing for admissions, universities should expect at least a few more years of remedial courses.
The better news? Students who were younger during the pandemic seem to be making up for the lost learning time. But for high schools, the message for teachers is clear: Don’t assume students learned the basics, and be prepared to look back several years to fill in the gaps.
SOURCE: Lauren Bauer and Eileen Powell, "Learning Curves: Post-COVID Learning Trajectories Differ by the Grade a Student Was in When the Pandemic Hit," Brookings, December 8, 2025.
