From 2020 to 2022, multiple crises reshaped the U.S. landscape, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic downturn. Empirical evidence indicates that Black Americans faced elevated age-adjusted rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality relative to their white counterparts. Moreover, the economic ramifications were discernibly pronounced, with Black households exhibiting a 29% higher likelihood of pandemic-induced loss of employment income compared to their white counterparts. The repercussions of these crises led to noteworthy disruptions in the educational paths of school-aged children and adolescents, with a marked disproportionate impact on Black students.
To date, attention on the impact of the pandemic on Black students has focused heavily on “learning loss.” Learning loss refers to declines in student academic performance relative to historical trends. The conversations surrounding learning loss have been racialized critiques of teachers, school administrators, and policymakers for closing schools and implementing remote learning during the period of the pandemic before widespread vaccine availability. This limited frame hinders a comprehensive forward-looking analysis of the impact of the pandemic on Black students, which overlooks the ways in which the public school system has historically underserved Black students.
The Thurgood Marshall Institute’s latest report Beyond Learning Loss: Prioritizing the Needs of Black Students as Public Education Emerges From a Pandemic examines a broad range of outcomes to describe how Black students have been impacted by the upheaval of the first few years of the pandemic. The report offers key recommendations to improve educational equity and better serve the needs of Black students as schools emerge from the pandemic. Read the full report here.
Overall, the evidence presented in this report demonstrates that all students have experienced serious disruption to their health and educational experiences. Importantly, these data also shed light on the unique pressures and adverse outcomes that Black students have faced over the past few years, extending over and above the narrow frame of “learning loss.” For example, Black students are facing an erasure of their culture and identity from academic curriculum through anti-truth laws and book bans. They have faced strikingly high rates of health consequences from COVID-19, caregiver loss due to COVID-19, attempted suicide, feelings of disconnectedness, hunger, and homelessness. And Black students continue to face disproportionately high rates of exclusion from school through suspension and expulsion.
Together the report’s findings confirm that a return to normalcy will not serve Black students. Instead, educational leaders must explore this moment as an opportunity to address structural drivers of educational inequity. As the nation emerges from the pandemic, with the help of record-breaking investments in the public education system through COVID-19 relief funds, educational leaders have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make equitable investments in public schools, which the vast majority of Black students attend.