The State Board of Education heard Wednesday about a new study assessing what the state’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is calling the “impact of lost instructional time” on North Carolina students due to COVID-19.

The study found an impact in almost every subject. Michael Maher, executive director of the Office of Learning Recovery & Acceleration at DPI, stressed that COVID-19 alone was responsible for the results. He said that most students made progress. It was just slower during the pandemic than it would normally have been.

Students who went to school in person where “specific and targeted resources and supports” were in place did better than those who stayed totally remote.

“These findings are critical to understanding how we continue to work towards recovery and acceleration statewide,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt in a press release.

The data

In contrast to many studies that compare pre-pandemic students’ performance with current students’ performance, this study projected how students would have performed had COVID-19 never happened. Maher and his team then compared that with how those same students actually performed.

According to the report, the only subject where the impact of COVID-19 wasn’t felt was English II. And students’ results were especially impacted in math.

In the graphs below, zero means that students did as well as expected. Bars going to the left indicate a negative (worse than expected) performance. The further to the left, the worse the performance. Bars going to the right indicate a positive (better than expected) performance. The further to the right, the better the performance.

The study found that male student learning was not more impacted by the pandemic than that of female students “despite early predictions.” The report states that “because females outperform males in a ‘typical year,’ females are further from what we might have expected in the absence of the pandemic.”

The report states that, during the pandemic, students of all races and ethnicities did worse than expected, and existing disparities were exacerbated.

Read the full article about COVID learning loss by Alex Granados at The 74.