Post-pandemic middle schoolers continue to struggle with reading

For most of us, the new year heralds hope, ushering in a fresh start and a season of new resolutions to make the future brighter than the past. But for millions of middle schoolers, the new year brings fear: fear of failing — again! For they are the "Covid Cohort," children of the pandemic, which, with the force of a thousand tornadoes, swept across our educational landscape and obliterated the foundations of literacy they should have received in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. Now, in the aftermath of the devastating loss of those early literacy years, middle schoolers struggle with reading and every subject related to reading, which means that they struggle with everything, since everything is inextricably tied to reading.

It's in the preschool and early elementary years that these middle schoolers should have learned to read by cracking our complex phonological-orthographic code. And it's in middle school that they should be "reading to learn." But how can they read to learn if they have never learned to read?

History, literature, and science require fluent reading skills and the ability to analyze, comprehend, and create complex sentence structures embedded with significant content — tasks that are impossible and terrifying for kids who lost the critical literacy years.

A recent article from the NWEA, a K-12 assessment and research organization, delineates the dismal (but not surprising) details :

"Today’s middle schoolers continue to struggle post-pandemic to read and write at the level needed to successfully navigate more complex academic content in the upper grades and beyond. Based on NWEA’s research, current 8th graders would need close to a full academic year of additional instruction to catch up to their pre-pandemic peers in reading. This trend was reiterated in recent assessment results from the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP), with only 30% of eighth-grade students performing at or above the NAEP proficient level."

But there's hope. Science reminds us that the brain is neuroplastic, enabling it to adapt and expand to receive new knowledge. What wasn't learned then can still be learned now. Our brains are always open for learning.

Though it's not too late to help our middle schoolers recover what Covid stole, the optimal window for learning literacy closes quickly.

That's why T.A.G. (The Academic Gym) is offering Covid Catch Up Classes now and throughout the summer. Learn more about our unique movement-based literacy program that blends the science of reading with rhythmic athletic routines to help kids become confident, focused, fluent readers. T.A.G. also partners with schools to turn classrooms into gyms and gyms into classrooms. We help schools use PE to teach PA (Phonological Awareness).