Tracing the Impact of COVID-19 on Early Language and Literacy Development from Pre-K Through First Grade

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious

The study examines how COVID-19 disrupted early language and literacy development for children in a Florida school district, following a cohort from pre-K in March 2020 through the end of first grade. Using propensity score matching (n=1,167) and comparing them with a pre-COVID-19 cohort (n=1,211) via multilevel regression and linear growth modeling, results show late-emerging negative impacts that intensify over time. The effects concentrate on unconstrained literacy skills such as comprehension, not on constrained skills like phonics, and are not moderated by poverty or race/ethnicity.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages22

Reading Time55 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

COVID-19 school disruptions and existing research gaps

Methods

Study design and cohort comparison

Statistical modeling approaches

Results

Timing and growth of impacts on language and literacy

Skill-specific learning loss and subgroup checks

AERA Open January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–22 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251338816 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Tracing the Impact of COVID-19 on Early Language and Literacy Development from Pre-K Through First Grade Elizabeth Burke Hadley Siyu Liu Eunsook Kim University of South Florida Meaghan McKenna University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Katharine Hull University of South Florida COVID-19 disrupted early educational experiences for a generation of children, but research on how missing school impacted academic development for young children is limited. This paper investigated the longitudinal impact of COVID-19 on the language and literacy development of children in a Florida school district, specifically following children who were in pre-K in March 2020 through the end of first grade. This COVID-19 cohort (n = 1,167) was compared with a preCOVID-19 cohort (n = 1,211) using propensity score matching, multilevel regression models, and linear growth modeling. Results indicated that the negative impacts of COVID-19 on language and literacy emerged late and increased over time for young children but were not driven primarily by remote learning. Young children showed especially severe learning loss in unconstrained literacy skills (e.g., comprehension) versus constrained skills (e.g., phonics). COVID-19 impacts were not moderated by child characteristics (e.g., poverty or race/ethnicity). Keywords: early childhood, literacy, language comprehension/development, longitudinal studies, regression analyses, COVID-19 In early 2020, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) arrived in the United States and began to spread rapidly. In an unprecedented moment in U.S. history, schools were closed nationwide to slow virus transmission, and teachers were asked to quickly pivot to remote learning with little to no preparation. Many students continued to learn remotely during the 2020– 21 school year, and others experienced additional disruptions to learning due to quarantines, teacher and staff shortages, and physical and mental health issues related to the pandemic well into the 2021–22 school year (Zviedrite et al., 2023) . Currently, we are still reckoning the impacts of these COVID-19-related disruptions to multiple years of school on children’s development and academic achievement. A relatively large number of reports have addressed the shorterterm impacts of COVID-19-related school closures on children’s learning in the United States, examining impacts in the fall of 2020 and through the first full year of pandemicaffected school (2020–21) . However, few studies have followed the same group of children longitudinally from the pre-COVID-19 period and across subsequent school years to trace how COVID-19 disruptions have impacted learning over time. Even fewer studies have focused on an early childhood population because standardized testing data are less available for young children compared with those in upper elementary school and beyond. Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on this population is essential because early learning experiences lay the foundation for later school success, and young children are particularly vulnerable to longlasting effects from environmental adversities that occur during their early years (Shonkoff, 2016) . It is possible that missed instructional opportunities due to COVID-19 may become more apparent and even be compounded over time for this group of children, who have spent their entire school careers learning within a COVID-19-affected landscape. In this paper, we address important gaps in the COVID-19 literature through our longitudinal investigation of how school Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative

FAQs

How did the study compare children affected by COVID-19 with pre-COVID-19 children?

It followed a COVID-19 cohort (n=1,167) from pre-K in March 2020 through first grade and compared it with a pre-COVID-19 historical cohort (n=1,211) using propensity score matching and multilevel regression with linear growth modeling.

When did negative impacts on language and literacy appear?

The negative impacts emerged late and then increased over time for young children during development through the early grades.

Which literacy skills showed the most severe learning loss?

Young children showed especially severe learning loss in unconstrained literacy skills, such as comprehension, compared with constrained skills like phonics.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious