Have you seen any media reports about declining test scores even mention the potential factors of cognitive impairment due to COVID infection in the brain, absences due to illness, or collective trauma due to the pandemic? Or is it only ever school closures from 2-3 years ago?
@TRyanGregory Propublica has a piece running now with that premise, the sole supporting research being something cited in a Times opinion piece suggesting that schools that were remote longer had greater test score declines.
Interesting if true, but I haven't been able to track down the research article. It's hard to imagine how well they could control for more obvious correlating factors. And to your point, Propublica didn't even mention COVID-induced cognitive impairment or trauma.
If we're talking exclusively this data set, it's all available online at https://www.nationsreportcard.gov
In short, there's zero evidence that schools that were closed longer have had greater declines than schools that were closed for less time. Forbes, actually, did a good piece on that when the 2022 data set came out at https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2022/09/24/did-closing-school-buildings-cause-test-scores-to-drop-looking-for-evidence/?sh=20f6d77a24c4
For whatever it's worth, the local public schools where we live were fully closed for exactly 3 weeks in 2020, after they had already finished state testing, during which time they would have largely been watching movies and whatnot in class, and everyone's raging about how that ruined the kids forever. It's obviously, absurd that essentially adding 3 weeks onto their summer vacation damaged them forever, but, the unfortunate reality is that no amount of data will ever make most people believe differently, so it's kind of pointless at this point in time.
