Closing the Gap: Strategies for Addressing Education Disparities Caused by the Pandemic

The pandemic disrupted schooling, but it did not create every educational disparity, and it did not affect every student in the same way. Some students lost access to consistent instruction. Others faced illness, housing or food insecurity, family responsibilities, weak internet access, interrupted special services, or frequent school changes. Some continued to make progress. Many experienced several of these conditions at once.

Years later, “pandemic learning loss” is too blunt to guide a lesson. A teacher cannot teach a national trend or a label. A teacher can identify a specific unfinished skill, preserve access to worthwhile grade-level learning, provide targeted support, and check whether that support is working.

Where the Recovery Stands Now

The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that recovery remained incomplete and uneven. The National Assessment Governing Board’s summary of the 2024 grade 4 and grade 8 results reported additional national declines in reading compared with 2022, some improvement in fourth-grade mathematics, and scores that generally remained below 2019 levels.

NAEP is useful for understanding broad patterns. It is not a diagnostic test for the student sitting in front of you. A national average cannot tell you whether one student needs help decoding multisyllabic words, comparing fractions, organizing a paragraph, understanding academic vocabulary, attending school consistently, or trusting that it is safe to attempt difficult work.

The classroom task is to move from a broad concern to a teachable next step.

Do Not Turn a Historical Event Into a Student Identity

A student is not “two years behind.” That phrase may summarize a score comparison, but it does not describe a teachable skill and can easily lower expectations across the curriculum.

Use language that leads to action:

“Reads grade-level narrative text accurately but loses meaning in dense informational paragraphs.”
“Can add fractions with like denominators and needs instruction connecting equivalent fractions to unlike denominators.”
“Explains ideas orally but needs a routine for organizing evidence in writing.”
“Understands the science concept when vocabulary and the diagram are previewed.”

Specific descriptions protect rigor because they identify what support to add instead of replacing the entire curriculum with lower-level work.

Start With Priority Learning

No teacher can reteach every standard a student might have missed since 2020. Identify the knowledge and skills that unlock the current unit or future learning.

Before a unit, ask:

What must students understand by the end?
Which two or three prerequisite skills are essential?
Which prerequisite can be taught just before students need it?
Which difficulty requires a separate intervention rather than a quick scaffold?
What evidence will show that the support worked?

This is one reason strong lesson planning begins with the learning and the evidence, not with an activity. If the priority is unclear, intervention time fills with disconnected review.

Use Short Diagnostics, Then Teach

A diagnostic check should be long enough to distinguish likely needs and short enough to leave time for instruction. Start with existing evidence: recent student work, curriculum assessments, reading or mathematics screeners, teacher observations, and records from intervention or special services.

Then use a small sequence:

Give one representative task.
Ask the student to explain the approach.
Provide a small prompt or model.
See whether the student can use the help on a similar item.

This approach reveals more than a right-or-wrong score. The site’s guide to dynamic assessment explains how graduated prompts can help a teacher notice what kind of support works and whether learning transfers.

Avoid spending weeks testing every possible gap before students receive help. Assessment should shorten the path to instruction, not become a holding pattern.

Keep Students Connected to Grade-Level Ideas

Students with unfinished prerequisite learning still need access to the knowledge, vocabulary, problems, texts, investigations, and discussions of their enrolled grade or course. Replacing all of that work with isolated remediation can create a second gap: while a student practices old skills, classmates continue building new knowledge.

Use just-in-time support where possible:

preview the essential vocabulary before a complex text;
model one prerequisite calculation immediately before the new problem;
provide a diagram, worked example, sentence frame, or partially completed organizer;
reduce unnecessary reading or writing demands when they are not the learning target;
let students discuss an idea before writing independently; and
remove the scaffold after the student can perform the step without it.

This does not mean every missing foundational skill can be solved inside grade-level instruction. Some students need explicit, additional intervention. The goal is to provide that intervention without unnecessarily excluding them from the broader curriculum.

Make Reading Intervention Specific

“Work on reading” is not an intervention plan. Determine whether the student needs support with word reading, fluency, vocabulary and knowledge, comprehension routines, or a combination.

The What Works Clearinghouse guide to reading interventions for students in grades 4–9 recommends building decoding of complex multisyllabic words, providing purposeful fluency-building activities, using comprehension-building practices, and giving students supported opportunities to make sense of challenging text. The strength of evidence differs by recommendation and is reported in the guide.

Those recommendations are more useful than assigning additional pages at the same level of difficulty and hoping that time alone closes the gap. Intervention should change the instruction, not only increase the amount.

For classroom-level comprehension practices, connect intervention with the site’s reading-comprehension strategies and questioning techniques.

Make Mathematics Intervention Coherent

In mathematics, identify the underlying idea rather than only the missed item type. A student who cannot solve a fraction word problem may need help with fraction magnitude, the language of the problem, selecting an operation, or representing the situation.

The What Works Clearinghouse guide to mathematics intervention in the elementary grades recommends systematic instruction, clear mathematical language, well-chosen concrete and semi-concrete representations, number lines, deliberate word-problem instruction, and regular opportunities to build fluency. Teachers should consult the guide for the evidence level and grade range of each recommendation.

Connect symbols, representations, language, and reasoning. Do not reduce intervention to timed worksheets or a longer list of nearly identical problems. The site’s math-teaching strategies provide examples of reasoning, discussion, representation, error analysis, and formative checks.

Group by a Current Need, Not a Permanent Rank

Targeted small groups can make instruction more precise. They can also become low-expectation tracks if the purpose is vague and membership never changes.

A useful intervention group has:

a specific skill or strategy;
evidence that each member needs that support;
instruction matched to the need;
a way to monitor progress; and
a date for changing or ending the group.

Students may need one grouping for decoding, another for a science investigation, and a mixed-readiness group for discussion. The article on flexible ability grouping explains why broad labels and permanent placement can do harm.

Separate Language Development From Thinking Ability

A multilingual learner may understand a concept and still need support expressing that understanding in English. A student may also have a reading, mathematics, or other learning need that should not be dismissed as language development. Use multiple ways for students to show what they know, coordinate with qualified specialists, and examine performance across tasks and languages when appropriate and available.

The guide to supporting English learners and multilingual learners covers visuals, modeling, structured interaction, vocabulary, language objectives, and family communication without lowering the intellectual demand.

Do Not Ask Families to Recreate School at Home

The old version of this article suggested that families set aside homework time and create a dedicated learning space. Some families can do that. Others share rooms and devices, work evenings, manage childcare, move between homes, or have had discouraging experiences with schools.

Communicate the priority, explain the support being provided at school, ask what the family notices, and offer realistic options. Avoid making a student’s access to core intervention depend on unpaid instruction at home.

Use the family’s preferred language and approved communication channel. The site’s home-school connection guide provides a practical structure for two-way communication that begins with observable information rather than blame.

Attend to Participation, Attendance, and Belonging

Academic support cannot work when a student is rarely present, afraid to take a risk, or disconnected from the classroom. Attendance concerns require the school’s established team process; teachers should not guess why a student is absent or assume a family does not value education.

Inside the classroom, make the entry to learning clear. Use predictable routines, frequent opportunities to respond, and tasks that let a student show partial understanding without public embarrassment. The articles on student engagement and daily social-emotional routines offer practical ways to support participation while keeping the academic goal visible.

Monitor the Response, Not Just the Score

Choose a small number of indicators connected to the intervention. For example:

accuracy reading multisyllabic words in connected text;
fluency on an appropriate passage;
correct use of a comprehension routine;
explanation of fraction magnitude using a number line;
independent completion after a scaffold is removed; or
transfer of the skill to current classwork.

Review evidence often enough to change course, but do not overreact to one day. Ask:

Was the intervention delivered as planned?
Is the student improving?
Does the support work only during the intervention, or does it transfer?
Should intensity, group size, time, method, or specialist involvement change?

Students can participate in appropriate goal setting, but do not make them responsible for correcting conditions the adults have not addressed.

What Schools and Districts Must Provide

A classroom teacher cannot build a recovery system alone. Schools and districts need:

a coherent curriculum and usable materials;
valid screening and diagnostic tools with time to interpret them;
intervention time that does not routinely replace every enriching subject or elective;
trained staff and manageable group sizes;
coordination among general education, special education, multilingual learner services, and intervention;
attendance, transportation, technology, and family-support systems;
professional learning tied to the actual intervention materials; and
a way to evaluate whether the system is helping students who have historically received fewer opportunities.

“Differentiate more” is not a staffing plan. The site’s differentiated-instruction guide can help a teacher vary access and support, but it cannot replace necessary specialists, time, or services.

A Four-Week Classroom Recovery Cycle

Week 1: Identify one priority standard and the essential prerequisite. Review existing evidence and use a short diagnostic task.
Week 2: Teach the grade-level lesson with a planned just-in-time scaffold. Begin a targeted intervention for students who need more.
Week 3: Check transfer into current classwork. Change grouping or prompts based on the response.
Week 4: Review progress with the appropriate team, decide what to continue or intensify, communicate useful information to students and families, and select the next priority.

The pandemic belongs in the history of the problem. It should not become a permanent explanation for every student difficulty.

Recovery becomes practical when adults stop trying to “close the gap” in the abstract and begin teaching the next important thing—with enough support, evidence, time, and system capacity to make progress visible.