Young kids missed the pandemic's school disruptions. Their reading scores are still behind

First and second graders continue to perform worse than their pre-pandemic counterparts on math and reading tests, according to a report published Tuesday by the education assessment and research group NWEA. In the youngest students' failure to recover, "there’s something kind of systemic here happening ... within schools and outside of schools,” said Megan Kuhfeld, a researcher at NWEA. The pandemic's effects on older children's academic achievement are well-documented.