The Impact and Implementation of Academic Interventions During COVID-19 - Evidence from the Road to Recovery Project

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

Pandemic-era disruptions to schooling caused widespread academic setbacks, leading districts to implement academic recovery interventions. Using multiple data sources, the study evaluates the impact and implementation of recovery interventions in four districts during the 2021–2022 school year. Results indicate the interventions reached fewer students than expected and produced little detectable effect on math and reading test scores through spring 2022. Interviews with district officials identify major implementation barriers such as reaching target populations, staffing, scheduling, policy constraints, and limited central-office capacity.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Background and problem

Academic setbacks and inequities

Study design

Data sources and districts assessed

Findings

Participation shortfalls

Effects on math and reading

Implementation challenges

Reaching targets, staffing, scheduling, capacity

Implications

Future recovery responses

AERA Open January-December 2024, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 1–18 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584241281286 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2024. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) The Impact and Implementation of Academic Interventions During COVID-19: Evidence from the Road to Recovery Project Maria V. Carbonari University of Pennsylvania Miles Davison NWEA Michael DeArmond American Institutes for Research, CALDER Daniel Dewey Harvard University Elise Dizon-Ross American Institutes for Research, CALDER Dan Goldhaber American Institutes for Research, CALDER Ayesha K. Hashim NWEA Thomas J. Kane Harvard University Andrew McEachin Educational Testing Service Emily Morton American Institutes for Research, CALDER Atsuko Muroga Harvard University Tyler Patterson University of Chicago Douglas O. Staiger Dartmouth College Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)). Carbonari et al. Pandemic-era disruptions to schooling resulted in academic setbacks for many students. To help students catch up, school districts nationwide are implementing a range of academic recovery interventions. In this paper, we use multiple data sources to evaluate the impact and implementation of academic recovery interventions in four school districts during the 2021-2022 school year. Our estimates suggest the interventions failed to reach the expected number of students and had little detectable impact on students’test scores. Interviews with district officials highlight a host of challenges districts faced during the 2021- 2022 school year. Considering the overall scale of pandemic learning loss, our results raise urgent questions about the adequacy of academic recovery efforts relative to students’needs. The results also have implications for how districts might respond to disrupted learning in the future (e.g. in the wake of natural disasters). Keywords: Achievement, at-risk students, COVID-19, educational policy, effect size, ESSER, intervention, policy analysis, regression analyses, urban education Pandemic-era disruptions to schooling have resulted in academic setbacks for many students in the US. The pandemic’s negative impact on learning is reflected in a range of assessments, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) (U.S. Department of Education, 2022a; 2020b) to NWEA’s MAP Growth tests (Kuhfeld & Lewis, 2022; Lewis & Kuhfeld, 2023) and Curriculum Associates’i-Ready assessments (Curriculum Associates, 2020) . Besides generally harming academic progress, pandemic disruptions have worsened prepandemic inequities by disproportionately impacting students with lower test scoresand students from historically marginalized groups (Dornet al., 2021; Education Policy Innovation Collaborative [EPIC], 2021; Lewis et al., 2021) .1 School districts nationwide have responded with a range of interventions to help students catch up academically, aided by $190 billion from the American Rescue Plan’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund. Popular interventions include teaching students in small groups, offering one-on-one tutoring, adding classes before and after school, and adding instructional minutes to the school day (Diliberti & Schwartz, 2022) . The stakes surrounding districts’ academic recovery efforts are high

FAQs

What does the study evaluate regarding COVID-19 academic recovery?

It examines both the impact and the implementation of academic recovery interventions in four school districts during the 2021–2022 school year.

What were the main findings about student achievement effects?

The interventions failed to reach the expected number of students and showed little detectable impact on student math and reading test scores through spring 2022.

Which implementation challenges did district officials report?

Officials highlighted difficulties including reaching target populations, staffing and scheduling interventions, accommodating existing policies, and building adequate central-office capacity.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam