During the pandemic, Lauren Bauer noticed something unsettling while working with students in a learning pod: the older students were struggling far more than the younger ones.

Expectations were higher for them. Kindergarteners could spend much of the day playing. Older students, however, were expected to keep pace with material that would shape their academic futures.

Now Bauer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, has data that confirms what she witnessed firsthand. A recent report from The Hamilton Project found a clear pattern: the older a student was when COVID disruptions began, the greater the academic decline.

Students who were in fourth grade during school closures and are now in ninth grade have fallen further behind than students who were in kindergarten and are now in fifth grade. This trend appeared across subjects.

Math suffered the most. Researchers suggest this is because math is cumulative—each concept depends on the last. Miss a foundational year, and every topic that follows becomes harder to grasp.

Despite this, most recovery efforts focused on younger students. The federal funding that supported those initiatives has now run out.

National data paint a bleak picture. The latest NAEP scores show continued drops in both reading and math. According to Harvard researchers, low-performing students are in “free fall.” While these trends began before the pandemic, COVID dramatically accelerated them.

Some states have attempted to soften the blow by lowering proficiency standards. Oklahoma, Alaska, and Wisconsin have faced criticism for changing assessments in ways that make progress appear stronger than it truly is.

But even that hasn’t solved the problem.

“Learning loss is so substantial that even making the tests easier isn’t producing the results it once did,” Bauer said.

For education innovators, the message is unmistakable: a major group of students has been overlooked. Most pandemic recovery tools were built for elementary learners. Middle and high school students need interventions designed for their stage of development—intensive tutoring tailored for adolescents, credit recovery programs, low-stakes assessments that reveal gaps without stigma, and academic support that doesn’t feel remedial.

This is exactly where Bridge Tutoring & Educational Therapy steps in.

At Bridge, support goes beyond content. Many struggling students don’t just need more practice—they need help rebuilding the learning systems that were disrupted. Through academic coaching and executive function coaching, students learn how to plan their work, manage time, organize materials, break down complex assignments, sustain attention, and monitor their own understanding. Instead of simply reteaching missed material, coaching targets the underlying skills that allow students to learn independently and consistently.

The students who were in fourth grade when COVID hit are now freshmen. They don’t have years to wait for recovery to “catch up.” With the right combination of targeted instruction and skill-based coaching, they can still regain momentum—and rebuild not just what they missed, but how they learn moving forward.

Article summarized from Playground Post