The academic effects of the pandemic weren’t just limited to school-age children. Kids who were babies and toddlers in the early years of COVID, currently in 1st and 2nd grades, are now struggling too, a new analysis finds.
The report, from researchers at the assessment company NWEA, analyzes the organization’s math and reading test results for students who were in grades K-2 in the spring of 2025.
First and 2nd graders scored lower than their pre-pandemic peers did in 2019 across both subjects. While math scores are trending slowly upward, reading scores stagnated after initial losses—mirroring trends that NWEA and other large-scale national tests have identified among older elementary students.
Kindergartners show a different pattern. Scores didn’t dip as far in 2021 and 2022 as they did for older students, and kindergartners have mostly closed the small gaps that did emerge.
The overall difference between 1st and 2nd graders’ performance and that of their pre-pandemic peers is relatively small. In math, it’s equivalent to about a third of a month of learning for 1st graders and one month for 2nd graders. In reading, it’s equivalent to about a month for both grades.
Still, these data on the youngest learners suggest that the pandemic wrought fundamental changes to the educational system that continue to shape children’s learning trajectories—even if none of their K-12 classes were ever affected by COVID-era disruptions, said Megan Kuhfeld, the director of growth modeling and analytics at NWEA, and an author on the report.
“I don’t want to be fatalistic,” she said, “but it does seem that these trends are pretty sticky in terms of the impacts we’re seeing.”
What the research says about the effects of the pandemic on toddlers
What explains the gaps for these young students? It could be the case that children who were babies during the pandemic experienced more behavioral and developmental challenges in kindergarten, which started to have bigger consequences as school became more academic in 1st and 2nd grades, said Kuhfield.
Studies of the pandemic’s effect on babies and toddlers have shown some negative effects on development, particularly in speech and communication.
A 2022 meta-analysis that examined studies of infants’ cognitive development during the first year of their lives found no overall differences between children born before the pandemic and children born at the beginning of the COVID era.
Still, the same synthesis did find that children born during the pandemic were at a higher risk for communication delays than children born before it.
A later large-scale study, conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers in 2024, found broader effects. This research analyzed results from the Ages and Stages Questionnaire, a screening tool used in pediatricians’ offices, from more than 50,000 children aged 0-5.
Children born during the first two years of the pandemic had slightly lower average abilities in communication, problem-solving, and other social skills than children born before the pandemic began. But pandemic babies didn’t score lower in fine motor or gross motor skills.
Other research, on children’s behavior, has been more mixed.
Some studies have shown that toddlers born during the pandemic are more likely to have behavior problems, others don’t show a difference, and still others find that effects are mediated by parents’ stress levels and socioeconomic status.
Teachers, though, report that their kindergartners are coming into school with fewer emotional regulation skills than before.
How COVID-era changes to schools might still affect achievement
It’s also possible that systemic changes to schools during the pandemic are contributing to NWEA’s findings, Kuhfeld said.
For instance, she offered, absenteeism rates across the country are still higher than they were pre-pandemic.
Funding may also play a role, she said. An infusion of federal and state aid during the pandemic supported districts in hiring support staff, like instructional coaches and interventionists. Now, facing reductions in state and federal funding and declining enrollment, some districts are cutting these positions.
There have been other structural changes to the education system, too, outside of the K-12 space. Thousands of child-care centers closed permanently in the first year of the pandemic. Preschool attendance among 3- and 4-year-olds dropped from 48% to 40% between 2019 and 2021, according to federal data.
The NWEA findings should prompt districts and states to identify system-level conditions in K-12, like staffing troubles and a lack of high-quality curriculum, that might be keeping recovery stagnant, especially in reading, the report’s authors write.
