Forty thousand high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are at risk of not graduating — including 6,000 this year — according to a new analysis that tracks the effects of school closures on students in the nation’s second largest district.

In middle school, about a third of students in the district are currently on grade level in reading and math. Some of the worst learning loss was found in the early grades, where reading skills declined the most in kindergarten and first grade compared to the 2019-20 school year.

With the district preparing to reopen in two weeks, the report, from advocacy group Great Public Schools Now, shows engagement in remote classes has sharply increased since the beginning of the pandemic. But even with that improvement, more than a third of middle and high school students weren’t actively participating in online work last fall, the report found.

Whether students are passing their classes this year has become “a very important measure for understanding the impact of distance learning on students,” the report said. That’s because even though the district administered standardized assessments, participation rates were so low the data is inconclusive.

Grades in middle and high school have dropped most among Black and Hispanic students, who make up over 80 percent of the district’s almost 600,000 students. And only 2 percent of English learners and 9 percent of students with disabilities are on grade level in reading at those grades, according to student performance data presented to the Los Angeles school board.

Read the full article about learning loss data in Los Angeles schools by Linda Jacobson at The 74.