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Trump administration deports hundreds of immigrants, even as a judge orders removals be stopped; Sierra Club sues DOGE over mass firings; Lack of opportunity pushes rural Gen Zers in AZ out of their communities; Fixing one problem, creating another? Ohio's lead pipe replacements.

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Secretary of State Rubio pledges more arrests like that of student activist Mahmoud Khalil. Former EPA directors sound the alarm on Lee Zeldin's deregulation plans, and lack of opportunity is pushing rural Gen Zers out of their communities.

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Farmers worry promised federal reimbursements aren't coming while fears mount that the Trump administration's efforts to raise cash means the sale of public lands, and rural America's shortage of doctors has many physicians skipping retirement.

Report: AR students still struggle with COVID-19 learning loss

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Wednesday, February 19, 2025   

Arkansas ranks 23rd among states in terms of the change in math achievement between 2019 and 2024, and 19th in reading, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard from the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford.

The study compared learning before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, said chronic absenteeism, which rose from 22% in 2019 to 28% in 2024, is keeping students in Arkansas from catching up.

"The pandemic itself may have been the earthquake but the increase in absences has been the tsunami that is continuing to roll through American schools," Kane explained. "It's not just about what happened or didn't happen during that 20-21 school year."

He noted the scorecard shows the gap between high-income and low-income school districts has increased, with 16% of Arkansas students enrolled in schools performing better now than they were in 2019.

School districts nationwide received federal money to address the learning loss caused by the pandemic. Arkansas received $1.9 billion. Kane stressed how the districts used the money had a significant impact on how well students recovered.

"The districts that received more money did see somewhat faster catch-up but it really depended on what districts spent the money on," Kane observed. "When districts spent the money on tutoring and summer learning and other kinds of interventions, they saw somewhat even faster progress."

He added moving forward, parents must be more involved in seeing to their children's success.

"Many polls have reported that parents are misinformed, they think that their own child if fine," Kane reported. "The reason why that is so important is that if parents think everything is fine, they are less likely to enroll in summer learning, they're less likely to ask for a tutor."


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