Last week, the Louisiana Department of Education released its annual Reading Report for children in kindergarten through third grade. The report revealed that older students are showing improvement, but younger children show a decline.
What’s the cause? Some think that “emergency” closures of schools and early learning centers coupled with mandatory masking delayed speech development and language acquisition.
Jeff Sadow writes: “The tail end of the cohort that caught the beginning of the pandemic restrictions in their crucial learning period are first graders today, while kindergartners are the first to bear the full brunt of restrictions. As it was, third graders scoring satisfactorily on reading were up 1.3 percent and second graders 1.9 percent, but first graders managed only a 0.6 percent gain in numbers and kindergartners dropped 2.3 percent.”
Public policy has consequences.
