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Unfinished Business: What Must Come Next for Public Education, Five Years after Pandemic Shutdowns

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Unfinished Business: What Must Come Next for Public Education, Five Years after Pandemic Shutdowns
Language: English
Authors: Robin Lake, Paul Hill, Arizona State University (ASU), Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE)
Source: Center on Reinventing Public Education. 2025.
Availability: Center on Reinventing Public Education. Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. H.B. Farmer Education Building, 1050 S Forest Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281. e-mail: crpe@uw.edu; Web site: https://crpe.org/
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 10
Publication Date: 2025
Document Type: Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Descriptors: Students, Teachers, Educational Development, Educational Improvement, Educational Planning, COVID-19, Pandemics, Elementary Secondary Education, Crisis Management, Emergency Programs, Federal Aid, Politics of Education, Educational Administration, Leadership Responsibility, Leadership Role, Tutoring, Individualized Instruction, Long Range Planning, Educational Strategies, Achievement Gap, Educational Change, Strategic Planning
Abstract: Five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, student achievement levels are in free fall. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results released in late January 2025, fewer than one-third of students nationwide scored at proficiency levels in reading and math. Achievement gaps by race, income, and other student characteristics have grown. Whatever may be causing this current decline in student achievement (whether lower teacher quality, looser accountability standards, or out-of-school factors like rising income inequality or increasing social media use), it did not start during the pandemic, but well before, in the early 2000s. Over the past five years, the Center on Reinventing Public Education has watched as the pandemic showed exactly how the education system's rigidities, hardwired inequalities, political nature, resistance to evidence-based practices, and inability to respond to individual student needs halted the progress of a generation of K-12 students. In a companion paper, the authors examine exactly what went wrong during the pandemic and why. In this paper, the authors discuss the problems anticipated pre-pandemic and propose solutions for the present--and the utter urgency of implementing them immediately.
Abstractor: ERIC
Entry Date: 2025
Accession Number: ED671645
Database: ERIC
Description
Abstract:Five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, student achievement levels are in free fall. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results released in late January 2025, fewer than one-third of students nationwide scored at proficiency levels in reading and math. Achievement gaps by race, income, and other student characteristics have grown. Whatever may be causing this current decline in student achievement (whether lower teacher quality, looser accountability standards, or out-of-school factors like rising income inequality or increasing social media use), it did not start during the pandemic, but well before, in the early 2000s. Over the past five years, the Center on Reinventing Public Education has watched as the pandemic showed exactly how the education system's rigidities, hardwired inequalities, political nature, resistance to evidence-based practices, and inability to respond to individual student needs halted the progress of a generation of K-12 students. In a companion paper, the authors examine exactly what went wrong during the pandemic and why. In this paper, the authors discuss the problems anticipated pre-pandemic and propose solutions for the present--and the utter urgency of implementing them immediately.