In the provided source, the authors asserted the claim that students experienced meaningful learning losses during the COVID-19 pandemic and that these losses did not quickly fade. In supporting these claims, the authors also conducted a systematic review of meta-analysis, including data from 42 research studies and spanning 15 different countries. This information is significant and useful because it helps to indicate that the effect of COVID-19 on all students wasn’t equal, and while math has had a greater loss than reading, students from different socio-economic backgrounds also experienced different effects from the disconnect. For our topic on COVID-19 and the effect it has on education, this article is useful and can provide me with legitimate information to introduce different aspects of COVID-19 and its influence on students and the numerous ways it can be further researched.

This source was found after searching google scholar for peer reviewed articles published in reputable journals.

Bloom, Reid, and Cassady argue that the abrupt transition to remote education during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted children’s academic structure, social interaction, and access to essential school-based services. They support this claim through professional observations, early pandemic reports, and discussion of the immediate challenges faced by students, families, and educators. This article is important because it captures the early-stage educational response to COVID-19 and highlights the instability caused by emergency remote learning. For our thesis, this source provides foundational context about the initial shock to educational systems, allowing me to trace how short-term emergency measures evolved into longer-term educational and social consequences.

This article was found using a search on the Web of Science database for “COVID-19 Education”.

Cahoon et al. examine the effect on educational delivery from the perspective of parents, and the variability of experience across children from different demographics, specifically socioeconomic status and maternal education. The article goes into depth on the results of their panel survey of households with at least one primary school aged child (4-11 years old) living in Northern Ireland during the COVID-19 lockdown. While this study doesn’t examine American households, it still holds valuable insight into the correlations between parental education, access to technology, and resources at home with Social Economic Status (SES). In relation to our thesis, this article provides an examination of many different aspects of home education that are tied to socioeconomic status, and their presence or absence in households in relation to SES.

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This qualitative study examined how parents of transition-age youth (14–21) with disabilities experienced school-based engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using 642 open-ended survey responses collected nationwide in early 2021, the researchers conducted a thematic analysis to identify key facilitators and barriers to engagement. Grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, the study found that parent engagement during the pandemic was shaped by multiple interacting levels – school practices, family contexts, systemic structures, and digital access. Four major themes emerged: School-based factors, family and contextual factors, systemic influences, and digital access and equity. Overall, the pandemic exposed both strengths and weaknesses in parent-school partnerships. The study concludes that effective engagement requires systemic, relational, and structural solutions – not just individual effort. Schools should invest in culturally responsive practices, strengthen communication systems, expand transition planning support, and prioritize long-term digital inclusion strategies.

Dela Cruz et al. examine the effects of COVID-19 school closures through a meta-analysis of 57 test-based studies across developed and developing countries. The authors argue that longer school shutdowns were strongly associated with greater learning loss, particularly in mathematics and among elementary students. While they estimated that one year of closure corresponds to 1.1 years of learning loss, once schools reopened, the learning loss was reduced by half. Still, this partial recovery was low in terms of pre-pandemic achievements. Their report agrees with other literature accentuating educational disparities and significant declines in math following the pandemic. This study informs our research using the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), which focuses on comparing 2019 baseline pre-pandemic outcomes to 2022-2023 post-pandemic outcomes across U.S. districts. Both studies measure achievement gaps; however, because Dela Cruz et al. synthesize correlational studies, the analysis cannot serve as a causal explanation for school closures directly contributing to learning loss.

This is a single-center retrospective study comparing 661 children with COVID-19 and 499 children with influenza treated between 2019 and 2021. The study found that influenza caused more severe illness in children than COVID-19. Children with influenza had higher fevers, more cough, rhinorrhea, respiratory distress, tachycardia, and tachypnea at triage, as well as more abnormal chest X-rays showing patchy involvement and consolidation. Inflammatory markers, especially C-reactive protein, were significantly higher in influenza, and viral coinfections were much more common. Influenza patients also had higher hospitalization rates, longer hospital stays, greater need for respiratory support, and higher mortality. In contrast, most children with COVID-19 had mild or asymptomatic disease, normal chest imaging, and very low mortality. The authors conclude that although COVID-19 received global attention, influenza remains a more severe and clinically burdensome respiratory illness in children, highlighting the importance of vaccination and rapid viral testing in pediatric care.

This article was found using a search on the Web of Science database for “COVID-19 Education”.

Haeck and Lefebvre estimate socioeconomic achievement gaps of 15-year-olds across Canada to assess the impact of the pandemic on inequalities in education. The resource uses the author’s companion article that documents the change in the achievement gap over time between low and high SES students using data from PISA – a triennial survey of the skills of 15-year olds in reading, mathematics, and science. This resource directly examines increases in the achievement gap based on SES due to the pandemic, comparing learning inequalities from the pandemic to those from summer. This article is related to our thesis as it directly examines the impact of socioeconomic status on learning outcomes, and examines the impacts of time out of school on test scores for high SES students as compared to low SES students. The use of test scores in similar categories, including math and reading provide compelling evidence towards the impact on educational gaps based on SES as well as the potential magnifying effects of COVID-19 on this rift.

Hammerstein et al. examine the effects of COVID-19 school closures during spring 2020 on student achievement in primary and secondary education. They argue that school closures led to overall declines in achievement in math and reading, with a disproportionate effect on younger children, children from low socioeconomic status families, and low-performing students. They use a systematic review, synthesizing relevant studies that focus on data from pre- and post-COVID-19 related school closures with student achievement as the dependent variable and reported statistical effect sizes. This research connects closely to the SEDA dataset, which measures academic achievement through standardized test scores and disaggregates scores by demographic. The SEDA data supports the conclusions of Hammerstein et al. and provides further data supporting the decline in achievement in math and reading language arts, especially among students of low socioeconomic studies. The article provides strong evidence with clear achievement measures, yet the conclusions may be limited by a small number of included studies concentrated in high-income countries, which may limit generalizability.

This source was found after searching google scholar for peer reviewed articles published in reputable journals.

Hoofman and Secord argue that the COVID-19 pandemic has had profound educational, developmental, and psychosocial consequences for children and adolescents, particularly due to school closures and the shift to remote learning. They support their argument by drawing on emerging research data, pediatric health studies, and reports documenting academic regression, mental health challenges, and widening inequities among students. This resource is important because it frames educational disruption as a public health issue, emphasizing that learning loss and social isolation affect long-term child development. For our thesis, this article provides medical and developmental evidence that strengthens the argument that COVID-19’s impact on education extends beyond academics and has lasting consequences on students’ well-being and equity in educational access.

The article compares how COVID-19 affected secondary schools in Scotland and the United States, highlighting both shared disruptions and important structural differences. In both countries, school closures, shifts to remote learning, and changes to exams significantly disrupted students’ education and worsened existing inequalities, especially for low-income students with limited access to technology and support. However, Scotland’s centralized education system allowed for more coordinated national responses, including uniform decisions about exam cancellations and grading adjustments, while the United States’ decentralized system led to varied policies across states and districts, creating uneven student experiences. The study concludes that although both systems faced similar challenges – academic disruption, mental health concerns, and widening achievement gaps – the structure of governance shaped how consistently and effectively schools responded to the crisis.

This article examines the impact of COVID-19 schooling disruptions on test scores from the Program for International Student Assessment study. They look at pre- and post-COVID-19 test scores for 15-year-old students across 72 countries, focusing primarily on math scores, with supplemental analysis on reading and science. The authors argue that school closures caused significant learning loss and these losses were larger in countries with longer closures. They further argue that closures disproportionately affect lower-achieving students, boys, immigrant students, and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This research is highly relevant to the SEDA dataset, as both rely on standardized test scores to measure learning declines and highlight disparities across demographics (specifically gender and economic status). A strength of this article is its international scope; however, it focuses strictly on PISA data of 15-year-olds, which may limit the generalizability of its findings to students of other ages, and measurements of domains other than math are less precise.

Kuhfeld et al. examine changes in U.S. students’ mathematics and reading scores across the COVID-19 pandemic, from fall 2019 to fall 2021. They look at MAP growth assessment data from over 5.4 million students grades 3-8. The authors argue that students experience substantial declines in achievement, especially in math, and that the declines accumulated over time rather than occurring solely during the initial school closures. They also find that achievement gaps by school poverty level and race/ethnicity widened from 2019 to 2021, especially in the elementary grades. These conclusions corroborate analyses of the SEDA dataset, as both focus on students in grades 3-8 and examine the racial and socioeconomic differences in test scores, highlighting widening inequalities across demographic groups. This study is large, nationally representative, and takes place across a significant amount of time, allowing for comparison across pre- and post-pandemic scores; however, its focus on school-level poverty rather than individual socioeconomic status may limit precision in estimating inequality.

Article retrieved via JSTOR through UCLA Library database.

Kurmann and Lalé argue that school closures during 2020-2021 significantly reduced access to effective in-person learning (EIPL), disproportionately affecting economically disadvantaged students. They analyzed school district reopening policies and learning modes (in-person, hybrid, remote), along with cell phone metadata to track student attendance, in order to estimate EIPL across public and private in the U.S. This study closely aligns with our Stanford Education Data Archive research, which specifically examines socioeconomic and racial disparities regarding education. Marginalized groups consistently suffer larger academic gaps because of COVID-19 disruptions compared to their white, affluent peers. The report also provides context for student participation patterns missing in SEDA data. Overall, Kurmann and Lalé’s correlational findings link to our dataset and help illustrate the long-term consequences of unequal access to in-person instruction.

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This article was found by searching on Academic Search Complete with keywords “COVID-19” and “Education”.

Molnár and Hermann evaluate the effects of remote learning on 1st graders’ school readiness skills as well as 2nd-8th graders’ performance in mathematics, reading, and science using data collected from before and during the pandemic. This article goes into detail about the study performed on a data set collected from an integrated online assessment platform called eDia. Molnár and Hermann examine in depth the learning loss from lack of in-person learning in both the short and long term, with distinction between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds. The study discussed in this article examines a similar topic as the article by Haeck and Lefebvre, but focuses on our dataset’s specific grade range. The article also discusses the differences in learning losses between SES groups, suggesting that low-SES children are far more greatly affected by lack of in-person instruction. This supports findings found in my other two articles, as well as our thesis that SES was one of the main factors in learning outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Pier, Christian, Tymeson, and Meyer argue that COVID-era schooling in California was associated with noticeably slower academic growth than in pre-pandemic years, producing an overall “learning lag” rather than steady progress. They support this claim by analyzing interim assessment results for roughly 100,000 Grades 4-8 students across 19 California local education agencies, comparing fall 2019 through winter 2020-21 growth patterns to typical growth in prior years. This source is important because it provides concrete, comparable benchmarks and shows that impacts were not evenly distributed, for example, English learners and Latinx students show larger average learning lags than their comparison groups. For our topic, this report gives credible quantitative context, a clear way to frame the problem, and subgroup patterns you can use to motivate equity-focused questions.

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This source was found after searching google scholar for peer reviewed articles published in reputable journals.

Stanistreet, Elfert, and Atchoarena argue that the COVID-19 crisis exposed and intensified existing global inequalities in education while forcing rapid digital transformation across educational systems. They use international policy analysis, global education statistics, and UNESCO data to demonstrate disparities in access to technology, institutional preparedness, and long-term educational opportunity. This source is important because it situates COVID-19’s educational consequences within a broader global and structural context rather than viewing the crisis as temporary disruption. In relation to our thesis, this article helps establish that the pandemic did not create inequality but magnified preexisting systemic problems, supporting my claim that COVID-19 has reshaped educational systems in ways that disproportionately affect marginalized populations.

According to the commentary piece, which is written by van de Werfhorst, the COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in learning delays, but just as significant was the widening learning inequality between socio-economic groups. This is, therefore, addressed using evidence from the Dutch test scores from Engzell et al., which revealed that these shutdowns resulted in an average loss for all, with even greater loss for those from less educated families. There are also various learning mechanisms, such as unequal support from parents, which resulted in a digital divide gap between these groups. For the purposes of our project, I find this source particularly important. The reason for this stems from the various ways it has portrayed the COVID-19 impact on education. As such, this piece has provided me with a wide scope of ideas to touch on when discussing COVID-19 and education, as I can freely explore using the research-based ideas to inform the various paths I would like to take up regarding the impact of COVID-19 on learning.

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