Understanding COVID-19’s Educational Impacts on Communities of Color

This resource is provided by ACSA Partner4Purpose NWEA. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted educational systems across the U.S., prompting concerns about a “lost year” of schooling for many children. Initial evidence from NWEA assessments indicates that students’ math test scores decreased substantively relative to students testing in the prior school year. There is also a possibility that results to date understate the true negative impact of COVID-19 on achievement. A key finding from NWEA’s research was that approximately one in four students who had tested last year were missing in the fall 2020 data, and that a higher percentage of missing test takers were Black or Latinx and attended schools serving a higher proportion of students living in poverty.

The report above addresses this incomplete understanding by looking more closely at data on the impact of the pandemic on Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) students.