Students Lost One-Third of a School Year To Pandemic, Study Finds (nytimes.com) 71
Children experienced learning deficits during the Covid pandemic that amounted to about one-third of a school year's worth of knowledge and skills, according to a new global analysis, and had not recovered from those losses more than two years later. The New York Times reports: Learning delays and regressions were most severe in developing countries and among students from low-income backgrounds, researchers said, worsening existing disparities and threatening to follow children into higher education and the work force. The analysis, published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior and drawing on data from 15 countries, provided the most comprehensive account to date of the academic hardships wrought by the pandemic. The findings suggest that the challenges of remote learning -- coupled with other stressors that plagued children and families throughout the pandemic -- were not rectified when school doors reopened.
"In order to recover what was lost, we have to be doing more than just getting back to normal," said Bastian Betthauser, a researcher at the Center for Research on Social Inequalities at Sciences Po in Paris, who was a co-author on the review. He urged officials worldwide to provide intensive summer programs and tutoring initiatives that target poorer students who fell furthest behind. Thomas Kane, the faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, who has studied school interruptions in the United States, reviewed the global analysis. Without immediate and aggressive intervention, he said, "learning loss will be the longest-lasting and most inequitable legacy of the pandemic."
[...] Because children have a finite capacity to absorb new material, Mr. Betthauser said, teachers cannot simply move faster or extend school hours, and traditional interventions like private tutoring rarely target the most disadvantaged groups. Without creative solutions, he said, the labor market ought to "brace for serious downstream effects." Children who were in school during the pandemic could lose about $70,000 in earnings over their lifetimes if the deficits aren't recovered, according to Eric Hanushek, an economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. In some states, pandemic-era students could ultimately earn almost 10 percent less than those who were educated just before the pandemic. The societal losses, he said, could amount to $28 trillion over the rest of the century.
"In order to recover what was lost, we have to be doing more than just getting back to normal," said Bastian Betthauser, a researcher at the Center for Research on Social Inequalities at Sciences Po in Paris, who was a co-author on the review. He urged officials worldwide to provide intensive summer programs and tutoring initiatives that target poorer students who fell furthest behind. Thomas Kane, the faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, who has studied school interruptions in the United States, reviewed the global analysis. Without immediate and aggressive intervention, he said, "learning loss will be the longest-lasting and most inequitable legacy of the pandemic."
[...] Because children have a finite capacity to absorb new material, Mr. Betthauser said, teachers cannot simply move faster or extend school hours, and traditional interventions like private tutoring rarely target the most disadvantaged groups. Without creative solutions, he said, the labor market ought to "brace for serious downstream effects." Children who were in school during the pandemic could lose about $70,000 in earnings over their lifetimes if the deficits aren't recovered, according to Eric Hanushek, an economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. In some states, pandemic-era students could ultimately earn almost 10 percent less than those who were educated just before the pandemic. The societal losses, he said, could amount to $28 trillion over the rest of the century.
is that all? (Score:3, Funny)
A couple years after graduation you'll lose more than that anyway. Not seeing much of a problem, really.
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I assume your point here is that time diminishes all unused attributes -- ie, use it or lose it. And, in that case, you aren't wrong.
I used to be able to perform calculus 2 equations with a napkin and a calculator (TI85 for life), and now I cannot even do that.
Linear equations? Well that's just addition and multiplication so that's hard to fuck up, but selecting the right one for the occasion and I'm lost. Sorry to my alleged career in 3d graphics, but it never materialized...
Still, I feel it's like a bike,
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I used to be able to use cursive. In fact, I'm old enough were all my essays growing up where done this way.
For the life of me, I cannot even get my hand to move when trying outside of my signature
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I had a terrible linear algebra prof, so I really never learned it. I could do enough by rote actions to do homework and tests, but I never learned the meanings behind all that. And I still regret this 40 years later because linear algebra is so very useful in computing and in so many domains where computing is used (3d graphics being minor), and at least once a year I'm hitting something at work or home where it would be helpful to better understand it.
Knowing more is always better. I really dislike the
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Even working actual engineering jobs the calc 2 and linear algebra were unused. All the usual formulas already set up and used instead, just arithmetic and a nat log once in a blue moon.
Most complicated thing I ever did at nuke plant job was figuring out how many bags of concrete for ellipsoidal bollard... and did you know there is no formula for perimeter of ellipse only approximations so all math education near useless for that half the problem and no calculus would help, hahaha.
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Yeah if that's such a big deal, just have a shorter summer holiday for a few years. Bam, crisis averted, if there was one to begin with.
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Yeah people have been making that absurd claim for half a century. Meanwhile, most jobs are done by humans and can't be done by robots, and no end of that in sight at all even if people are making hype claims about AIbots
Re:lost to authoritarian lockdowns, not the pandem (Score:4, Interesting)
Some countries, Sweden for example, did not lock down schools.
Sweden had up to ten times the number of deaths from covid [businessinsider.com] than its neighbors, and it did close high schools and universities.
Also, Sweden has such a low density of people they were naturally social distancing. And further, the Swedes trust their medical community and elected officials. So when told to socially distance themselves, not visit the medically vulnerable, don't gather in large crowds, etc, they did just that. Unlike the U.S. where people went out of their way to contract covid [go.com] or did their own research [al.com] and knew more than the experts.
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Sweden had up to ten times the number of deaths from covid [businessinsider.com] than its neighbors
Deaths per 1mil:
Denmark: 1,395
Finland: 1,555
Norway: 928
Sweden: 2,275
I question your use of the term 'up to ten times'.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Also, Sweden has such a low density of people they were naturally social distancing.
Denmak: 137 per Km2
Finland: 18 per Km2
Norway: 15 per Km2
Sweden: 25 per Km2
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Occam's razor would suggest that the 2019 coronavirus outbreak has the same origin as the previous coronavirus outbreak in China in 2003, or the outbreak in 2011 in the middle east.
In case you took the proclamations of an "unprecedented" and "unforseeable" disease as true, allow me to clarify: The previous outbreaks were all of zoonotic origin.
Occam isn't going to help you here.
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The GP was grossly overexaggerating with his post, because Sweden never had over 10x the deaths of its neighbors. But looking at deaths in 2023 is also misleading, because Sweden's response to the virus after late 2020 was similar to the reaction of its neighbors. It was the difference in deaths in the summer and fall of 2020 where Sweden saw significantly more deaths than its neighbors (but nowhere near 10x).
The GP was likely referencing a Business Insider article [businessinsider.com] which used the same sensational claims, bu
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Of that number, how many were SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN?
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> They say Sweden's deaths rivaled that of the US
> with its TERRIBLE response.
That still means Sweden did better than we did though. For an equal or similar number of deaths, I sure as hall would have preferred Sweden's "Keep calm and carry on, but take a few extra common-sense precautions." approach over our own "Shut down everything and force everyone to be shut-ins for two years." reaction.
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They lost a lot more than that. (Score:4, Interesting)
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And those officials who made it so we couldn't see dying relatives will not be forgotten.
A LOT of people lost relatives who died alone in hospitals and nursing homes (not from Covid) that didn't get to see their families before they passed due to voodoo and witchcraft from the tin pot dictators.
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Isn't that just Summer? (Score:3)
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There is no way to recover this learning loss (Score:3, Informative)
If your engineering project had been on pause and then plagued by interruptions and setbacks for two years, what would would think of a boss who told you "That's alright, I just need you to worker harder for a while so we can catch up with the initial schedule."
When something is predicated on continuous and sequential effort by fixed size team (the student) a delay is just a delay. We already do basically everything we can as a society to bring up educational performance, and if there were a way to magically jump further ahead, no one would be waiting for a post-pandemic crisis to implement it. Those kids are - almost certainly - permanently behind.
The concern over learning loss was raised early in the pandemic. Here [mckinsey.com]'s an analysis published June 1, 2020 which uncannily matches the report linked in the summary:
All told, we estimate that the average K–12 student in the United States could lose $61,000 to $82,000 in lifetime earnings (in constant 2020 dollars), or the equivalent of a year of full-time work, solely as a result of COVID-19–related learning losses.
We also had good evidence by May of 2020 that children were not at additional risk from COVID in attending school [yahoo.com] and nor was the community [sciencedaily.com].
But in the US, policy was dictated by politics [nypost.com] rather than an objective risk-benefit analysis based on accumulated evidence. The reason we are now, in 2023, finally taking seriously what was raised in 2020, is simply because we're past the point where it can affect the desired decisions.
Re:There is no way to recover this learning loss (Score:4, Informative)
The researchersâ(TM) analysis of data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that there were 821 Covid-19 deaths in this age group during a 12-month period from August 2021 to July 2022. That death rate â" about 1 for every 100,000 children ages 0 to 19 â" ranks eighth compared with the 2019 data. It ranks fifth among adolescents ages 15 to 19.
Covid-19 deaths displace influenza and pneumonia, becoming the top cause of death caused by any infectious or respiratory disease. It caused âoesubstantiallyâ more deaths than any vaccine-preventable disease historically, the researchers wrote.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/0... [cnn.com]
But you know, I'm sure it's more important to increase future earning potential by like $500 a year.
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https://edition.cnn.com/2023/0... [cnn.com]
But you know, I'm sure it's more important to increase future earning potential by like $500 a year.
(a) You have constructed a false dichotomy. You need to establish that closing schools was an effective policy remediation against kids contracting covid before you can present it as a tradeoff. That requires knowing what the baseline is. The comparison for whether open schools has a net negative impact is to the actual scenario in which kids still contract covid in their friend groups, from parents and family, and when schools eventually do reopen - not to a fictitious universe where closing schools resul
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What there's no way to recover from is long covid. Even young people can suffer lifelong health effects.
Re: There is no way to recover this learning loss (Score:2)
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Little early to be calling it "life long".
We know that it can cause permanent scarring of the lungs. Whether any of the other stuff will turn out to be permanent remains to be seen, AFAIK, but I'm not up on the latest so I don't know if more permanent effects have been identified yet.
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The problem is that the school system is a pipeline. If you delay one year's cohort for an additional year, you end up with two year's worth of students applying for university places at the same time, or enter the job market at the same time.
The gaps could have been made up, over the summer, and with additional funding. Countries where the education system wasn't already on its knees tended to do better in that regard.
Even so, some stuff was just unavoidably lost. Students who were supposed to do a year st
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The learning loss is also definitely more than three months. My oldest started sixth grade this year, and the middle school gives parents access not only to per-semester grades, but for every single assignment. Along with that comes information about how the other kids in class did--not individually, but mean, median, high, and low scores for every assignment. I see tests where my (previously underperforming) student is scoring 20 points above median on a regular basis. I see test where the highest grad
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If your engineering project had been on pause and then plagued by interruptions and setbacks for two years, what would would think of a boss who told you "That's alright, I just need you to worker harder for a while so we can catch up with the initial schedule."
I would be much more receptive if I had a job where I didn't work for 3 months per year, and for a couple years was paid extra to work those 3 months.
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Simply don't have the data (Score:5, Insightful)
We spent $&#& TRILLIONS of dollars on this and we have very little knowledge of the epidemiology of the disease.
China just let covid go in the country and it looks like hundreds of millions of people caught it in a few weeks. But there is no trusted data on deaths, serious illnesses etc. Did China lose 3 MILLION people in 3 weeks? We don't know.
Were shutdowns the right answer despite the cost? WE DON'T KNOW. We don't have any idea what to do next time because not only did we as a society fail utterly in fighting COVID, we didn't even learn anything from our failure.
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Different countries have data of different qualities & usefulness. It is possible to get some idea of what's been happening but it depends on what questions you want to ask of it.
This report on education is doing the best it can with the data available. I'm sure
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It was my impression that it is very well known what needs to be done with any pandemic. It isn't popular politically or financially/economically and requires a "heavy hand" which doesn't waver.
That Spanish flu outbreak in the early 1900s? Town/cities that used the "heavy, unwavering hand"-method, suffered initially the most, but were all back on their feet in much less time than towns/cities where fear about politics and economics ruled. Because those fears resulted in a festering wound that easily takes 2
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We also don't know how many people died because of the measures intended to stop COVID. My wife is the mammographer at our local hospital, and during the lockdown all mammograms were halted as they were not considered essential. She switched to doing regular modalities (CT, x-ray, etc) during this time. After several months, when they finally started mammograms again, the number of masses she found was the highest they had ever seen. Not only that, but they were also larger and more matured. There is no qu
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https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
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I know, right? I can't even go to movies in the theatre anymore. Wait... yes I can. Well, I can't go to local coffeehouses anymore for fear of... oh, wait... yes I can. How was this a failure again? We failed so bad that two years later everything is mostly functioning as it was. What a travesty. What an utter disaster.
A whole lot was learned, it just wasn't in front of your your face.
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We lost trillions is productivity and months of global education, along with maybe a million dead. Maybe. What measures worked, which didn't. What is the current risk of serious illness per infection for a healthy person as a function of age? Did China's shutdows save lives? Are people in India naturally lower risk than in Europe? Why didn't mil
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While we don't have exact numbers, we do have various facts that point to increased hospitalization and deaths after the restrictions were lifted.
Chinese officials called in a COVID tsunami [bbc.com]. The same link shows massive queues in front of clinics and pharmacies. Pharmacies ran
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Not that uncommon in the rest of the world (Score:3)
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As the education experts put it, what really matters, in terms of quality of life & standard or li
It's okay (Score:1)
...they can be politicians.
How much on social media and "Al"? (Score:2)
Sure that technology doesn't make them less educated.
Short term problem for humanity (Score:2)
No big deal. Those kids in the pipe will age into the workforce slightly less capable than they otherwise might have been (in general) and disappear. In 6 years or so the pipe will once again be filled with the wonder and promise of the next generation. We're going to be flush with white collar professionals anyway. If some folks are sluggish getting into an IT career, so much the better, with all the layoffs and adjustments happening now.
Not a Teacher (Score:4, Informative)
Experience of Paris 1968 (Score:2)
Despite the disruption to university classes and the handing out of degrees without meaningful testing, later evidence shows that the graduates did as well as other cohorts who were put through the whole experience. This would appear to reflect the limited value of the higher education in terms of actual ability to do the jobs they end up. One suspects the same remains the case for higher education; the interesting question is when this effect kicks in within the longer education timespan.
Who funded the study? (Score:2)
From the NYTimes article.
emphasis added
In the United States, one study showed that the average public elementary or middle school student lost the equivalent of a half-year [harvard.edu] of learning in math, and 6 percent of students were in districts that lost more than a full year. Standardized math test scores in 2022 [stanford.edu], when compared with those in 2019, showed the largest drop ever recorded [nationsreportcard.gov] in the three decades since the exam was first administered.
Removing mistaken moderation. (Score:2)
tradeoffs (Score:2)