Trending Topic Research File
The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student achievement and education equity has made learning loss one of the most critical issues facing educators, students, and researchers. Learning loss during summer breaks remains a persistent challenge.
The following compendium of open-access articles are inclusive of all substantive AERA journal content regarding learning loss published since 2018. This page will be updated as new articles are published.
Note: Articles are listed below in reverse chronological order of publication.
Tracing the Impact of COVID-19 on Early Language and Literacy Development from Pre-K Through First Grade Elizabeth Burke Hadley, Siyu Liu, Eunsook Kim, Meaghan McKenna, Katharine Hull AERA Open, May 2025 Researchers found that the negative impacts of COVID-19 on language and literacy emerged late and increased over time for young children but were not driven primarily by remote learning.
In School, Engaged, on Track? The Effect of the Pandemic on Student Attendance, Course Grades, and Grade Retention in North Carolina Sarah Crittenden Fuller, Tom Swiderski, Camille Mikkelsen, Kevin C. Bastian Educational Researcher, December 2024 Researchers found that each outcome worsened on average in 2020–2021, with larger changes at the high end of the absence distribution, the low end of the grade distribution, and among historically marginalized student groups.
Promises and Limitations in District Digital Capacity for Education During COVID-19 Emily E. N. Miller, Sarah Pedersen AERA Open, December 2024 Researchers found that increased investment in digital preparedness leading up to the pandemic was protective against decreases in test scores. However, nonmetropolitan and Appalachian areas did not experience the same benefits from their digital capacity investments compared with their metropolitan counterparts.
The Impact and Implementation of Academic Interventions During COVID-19: Evidence from the Road to Recovery Project Maria V. Carbonari, Miles Davison, Michael DeArmond, Daniel Dewey, Elise Dizon-Ross, Dan Goldhaber, Ayesha K. Hashim, Thomas J. Kane, Andrew McEachin, Emily Morton, Atsuko Muroga, Tyler Patterson, Douglas O. Staiger AERA Open, September 2024 Researchers found that the interventions failed to reach the expected number of students and had little detectable impact on students’ test scores.
State-Funded Pre-K and Children’s Language and Literacy Development: The Case of COVID-19 Elizabeth Burke Hadley, Siyu Liu, Eunsook Kim, Meaghan McKenna Educational Researcher, June 2023 Researchers found that COVID-19 closures did not have significant negative impacts on pre-K children’s language and literacy skills at kindergarten entry.
Testing an Explanation for Summer Learning Loss: Differential Examinee Effort Between Spring and Fall Megan Kuhfeld, James Soland, Brennan Register, Andrew McEachin Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, April 2023 Researchers did not find evidence that seasonal differences in test effort are a main driver of summer learning patterns estimated with MAP Growth assessments.
The Impact of Summer Programs on Student Mathematics Achievement: A Meta-Analysis Kathleen Lynch, Lily An, Zid Mancenido Review of Educational Research, July 2022 Researchers found that summer programs are a promising tool to strengthen children’s mathematical proficiency outside of school time.
A Blueprint for Scaling Tutoring and Mentoring Across Public Schools Matthew A. Kraft, Grace T. Falken AERA Open, September 2021 Researchers found that targeted approaches to scaling school-wide tutoring nationally, such as focusing on K–8 Title I schools, would cost between $5 and $16 billion annually.
The Effect of the COVID-19 Lockdown on Bilingual Singaporean Children’s Leisure Reading Baoqi Sun, Chin Ee Loh, Beth Ann O’Brien, Rita Elaine Silver AERA Open, July 2021 Researchers found that children’s reading enjoyment before the lockdown, changes in reading enjoyment and print reading amount during the lockdown in English and Chinese/Malay were significantly correlated.
School’s Out: The Role of Summers in Understanding Achievement Disparities Allison Atteberry, Andrew McEachin American Educational Research Journal, July 2020 Researchers found that while some students actually maintain their school-year learning rate, others lose nearly all their school-year progress.
The Sensitivity of Teacher Value-Added Scores to the Use of Fall or Spring Test Scores Allison Atteberry, Daniel Mangan Educational Researcher, May 2020 Researchers revisited and extended Papay's (2011) analyses that teacher value-added measures (VAMs) from a statistical model using the most common pre/post testing timeframe–current-year spring relative to previous spring (SS)–are essentially unrelated to those same teachers’ VAMs when instead using next-fall relative to current-fall (FF).
Are We Trending to More or Less Between-Group Achievement Inequality Over the School Year and Summer? Comparing Across ECLS-K Cohorts David M. Quinn, Q. Tien Le AERA Open, December 2018 Researchers found that more between-group equalizing by race/ethnicity and SES occurred over kindergarten in the recent cohort. However, this was often followed by more inequality widening over summer and more widening or less narrowing over first grade in the latter cohort.
Effects of a Summer Mathematics Intervention for Low-Income Children: A Randomized Experiment Kathleen Lynch, James S. Kim Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, March 2018 Researchers found that being randomly assigned to the program plus laptop condition caused children to experience significantly higher reported levels of summer home mathematics engagement relative to their peers in the control group.