In March 2020, COVID-19 disrupted life across the globe, and education in the United States was among the hardest-hit areas as schools rapidly shifted to remote learning. Students faced unstable learning environments, inconsistent access to resources, and a fundamental change in how they engaged with school (Fahle et al.). These disruptions had lasting political, economic, and social consequences for communities, but their educational impact is especially visible in national assessment data that track student achievement over time.
Figure. Relevant events surrounding the development of COVID-19 and its impact on educational status quo.
As we move from immediate disruptions of pandemic schooling to the patterns that emerged in student performance, it becomes clear that these impacts were not distributed evenly across all communities. Educational attainment in the United States is a complex landscape, and depending on one’s background, people have different experiences and face different outcomes (Gee et al.). Our project seeks to illuminate how various slivers of identity interact on an individual level, examining how gender, race, socioeconomic status, region, and the pandemic’s disruptions intersect to shape educational trajectories. By comparing groups and using those comparisons to analyze patterns based on preexisting inequalities and experiences, we seek a narrative that respects and understands the complexity of students’ lived experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following sections examine how different demographic groups were uniquely affected in terms of academic outcomes and potential reasons for the results observed.