Achievement Gaps in the Wake of COVID-19
Open accessAbstract
A survey targeting education researchers conducted in November 2020 provides forecasts of how much achievement gaps between low- and high-income students in U.S elementary schools will change as a result of COVID-related disruptions to in-class instruction and family life. Relative to a pre-COVID achievement gap of 1.00 SD, respondents’ median forecasts for the jump in the achievement gaps in elementary school by spring 2021 were large–a change from 1.00 to 1.30 and 1.25 SD for math and reading achievement. Forecasts were similar for 2022. Although forecasts were heterogeneous, respondents showed overwhelming consensus that gaps would grow. We discuss implications for strategies to reduce learning gaps exacerbated by the pandemic as well as the mental models researchers appear to employ in making their forecasts.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The results confirm the fears held by many that school closures would cause socioeconomic gaps to widen.
“Our results show that learning loss was particularly pronounced for students from disadvantaged homes, confirming the fears held by many that school closures would cause socioeconomic gaps to widen (51 –55).”
From Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic (2021) · cites this paper as [55]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic
Engzell, P., Frey, A., & Verhagen, M. D. (2020) · doi:10.31235/osf.io/ve4z7 · Cited by 1,739 · see citing works
Using prediction markets to estimate the reproducibility of scientific research
Dreber, A., Pfeiffer, T., Almenberg, J., Isaksson, S., Wilson, B., Chen, Y., Nosek, B. A., & Johannesson, M. (2015) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1516179112 · Cited by 331 · see citing works
Rigorous Large-Scale Educational RCTs Are Often Uninformative: Should We Be Concerned?
Lortie-Forgues, H., & Inglis, M. (2019) · Educational Researcher · doi:10.3102/0013189x19832850 · Cited by 234 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 20
- Bacher-Hicks, A., Goodman, J., & Mulhern, C. (2021). Inequality in household adaptation to schooling shocks: Covid-induced online learning engagement in real time. Journal of Public Economics, 193, 104345.
- Bailey, D. H., Duncan, G. J., Cunha, F., Foorman, B. R., & Yeager, D. S. (2020). Persistence and Fade-Out of Educational-Intervention Effects: Mechanisms and Potential Solutions. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 21(2), 55-97.
- Bansak, C., & Starr, M. (2021). Covid-19 shocks to education supply: how 200,000 US households dealt with the sudden shift to distance learning. Review of Economics of the Household, 1-28.
- Bond, T. N., & Lang, K. (2013). The evolution of the Black-White test score gap in Grades K-3: The fragility of results. Review of Economics and Statistics, 95(5), 1468-1479.
- DellaVigna, S., & Pope, D. (2018). What motivates effort? Evidence and expert forecasts. The Review of Economic Studies, 85(2), 1029-1069.
- DellaVigna, S., Pope, D., & Vivalt, E. (2019). Predict science to improve science. Science, 366(6464), 428-429.
- Duncan, G., & Magnuson, K. (2011). The nature and impact of early achievement skills, attention skills, and behavior problems. In G. J. Duncan & R. J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity?: Rising inequality, schools, and children's life chances (pp. 47-69).
- Fazio, L. K., & Marsh, E. J. (2009). Surprising feedback improves later memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16(1), 88-92.
- Hill, C. J., Bloom, H. S., Black, A. R., & Lipsey, M. W. (2008). Empirical benchmarks for interpreting effect sizes in research. Child Development Perspectives, 2(3), 172-177.
- Jacob, B. A., Lefgren, L., & Sims, D. P. (2010). The persistence of teacher-induced learning. Journal of Human resources, 45(4), 915-943.
- Kraft M. & Falkin, G. (2020). A Blueprint for Scaling Tutoring Across Public Schools. (EdWorkingPaper: 20-335). Retrieved December 14, 2020 from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/dkjh-s987 · DOI
- Kuhfeld, M., Soland, J., Tarasawa, B., Johnson, A., Ruzek, E., & Liu, J. (May 2020). Projecting the potential impacts of COVID-19 school closures on academic achievement. Educational Researcher, 49(8), 549-565.
- Lee, S. J., Ward, K. P., Chang, O. D., & Downing, K. M. (2021). Parenting activities and the transition to home-based education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Children and Youth Services Review, 122, 105585.
- Murnane, R. & Levy F. (1996). Teaching the New Basic Skills. New York: Free Press.
- Phillips, N. (2021). The coronavirus is here to stay-here's what that means. Nature, 590(7846), 382-384.
- Quinn, D. M. (2015). Black-White summer learning gaps: Interpreting the variability of estimates across representations. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 37(1), 50- 69.
- Reardon, S. (2011). The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations", in Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane (eds.), Whither Opportunity: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances, New York: Russell Sage, pp. 91-116.
- Reich, J., Buttimer, C. J., Fang, A., Hillaire, G., Hirsch, K., Larke, L. R., ... & Slama, R. (2020). Remote learning guidance from state education agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic: A first look. Retrieved December 14, 2020 from https://edarxiv.org/437e2/
- Renaissance Learning. (2020, November). How kids are performing: Tracking the impact of COVID-19 on reading and mathematics achievement. Special report series Fall, 2020 Edition. https://www.renaissance.com/how-kids-are-performing/
- Tetlock, P. E., Mellers, B. A., & Scoblic, J. P. (2017). Bringing probability judgments into policy debates via forecasting tournaments. Science, 355(6324), 481-483.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic
Engzell, P., Frey, A., & Verhagen, M. D. (2021) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2022376118 · Cited by 1,848 · see citing works
“Our results show that learning loss was particularly pronounced for students from disadvantaged homes, confirming the fears held by many that school closures would cause socioeconomic gaps to widen (51–55).”
A systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence on learning during the COVID-19 pandemic
Betthäuser, B. A., Bach-Mortensen, A. M., & Engzell, P. (2023) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-022-01506-4 · Cited by 568 · see citing works
Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic
Engzell, P., Frey, A., & Verhagen, M. D. (2020) · doi:10.31235/osf.io/ve4z7 · Cited by 1,739 · see citing works
School closure policies and student reading achievement: evidence across countries
Kennedy, A. I., & Strietholt, R. (2023) · Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability · doi:10.1007/s11092-023-09415-4 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
“The COVID-19 pandemic raised concerns among scholars and the public regarding the potential for an increase in the social achievement gap (Bailey et al., 2021; Goudeau et al., 2021).”
- Authors
- Bailey, D. H., Duncan, G. J., Murnane, R. J., & Au Yeung, N.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- University of California, Irvine, CA
- Corresponding author
- Bailey, Drew H.
- Venue
- Educational Researcher
- Published
- 2021-04-22
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 266-275
- ISSN
- 0013-189X (ISSN-L)
- 1935-102X
- OpenAlex
- W3119648563
- Cited by
- 134
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 37 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 13
- FWCI
- 40.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- escholarship.org
- Locations
- Educational Researcher (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Brown Digital Repository
- EdWorkingPapers.com
- Funders
- Jacobs Foundation Early Career Research Fellowship
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Education during COVID-19 pandemic
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts
- Keywords
- achievement gap, COVID-19 pandemic, low-income students, elementary school students, learning loss, mathematics achievement, reading achievement, educational forecasting, mental models
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
