The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on elementary-school children reading performance

The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on education systems worldwide. The sudden shift to remote learning during school closures quickly raised concerns among educators and policymakers about the academic achievement of students, particularly those from marginalized or vulnerable groups. Our researchers want to explore how impactful were elementary school children’s losses in reading ability during the COVID-19 pandemic? Amira is an edtech tool that provides students with a patient, personalized reading tutoring and was deployed before, during, and after the COVID pandemic. The existing data on this platform about reading performance provides a unique opportunity to assess how school closures have affected reading performance. Moreover, this research project will examine the extent to which children have returned to normal reading levels since the resumption of in-person classes. Finally, we are interested in evaluating whether the impact of school closures on reading ability was dependent on socio-economic factors such as household income etc.