Even after nearly three years since the end of the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic, American students are still struggling to return to pre-COVID education levels due to the numerous setbacks of school cancelations and remote learning.

As Axios reports, the Education Recovery Scorecard (ERS) released a study on Tuesday revealing that American students remain about half a grade below their pre-pandemic scores in the subjects of math and writing. A similar report by the Nation’s Report Card revealed that not one state saw any improvement in test scores between 2019 and 2024.

According to the report, only about 17% of students between third grade and eighth grade are in districts with an average math score higher than 2019 levels, while another 11% are in districts that have surpassed 2019 levels in reading. Only 6% of students have recovered to pre-pandemic levels in both subjects simultaneously.

Out of all 50 states, only Louisiana saw a slight improvement in both math and reading.

Following the COVID pandemic, which saw the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year canceled, followed by the implementation of “remote learning” for the 2020-2021 school year, student absentee rates skyrocketed. The trend has continued even after the pandemic was declared to be officially over in 2023.

In 2019, the national student absentee rate was just 15%. In 2022, the rate surged to 29%, before dropping slightly to 26% in 2023. Since Spring of 2024, 20 states saw absentee rates fall by roughly 2%.

“The full impact of the rise in absenteeism is not yet clear,” the ERS report said.

The report made several recommendations for how to address the ongoing learning crisis, suggesting that states and local districts redirect funding towards student interventions now that federal COVID relief funding has evaporated. It also recommended that local officials, including school leaders and mayors, should publicly appeal to students to return to school in an effort to reduce absence rates.