Educators and policymakers should proceed with caution when interpreting studies that attempt to identify such specific effects. Instead, researchers should focus on helping education leaders understand the overall impact of the pandemic on students, putting particular emphasis on discovering which groups have suffered the worst effects. The best evidence to date indicates that Covid-19 has had a substantial negative impact overall and has disproportionately harmed the learning of disadvantaged students. Continued research in this direction could provide a sharper picture of which students have faced the most severe challenges under Covid-19, pointing the way toward how best to allocate resources to address learning losses.
