Author(s)

Timothy Goodman¹, Patty LeBlanc², William G. LeBlanc³

¹Marion County Public Schools, Marion, USA.
²College of Education, Southeastern University (Retired), Lakeland, USA.
³University of Colorado (Retired), Denver, USA.

This study explored the reading performance scores of elementary school students in a single Florida school district before and after school closures in spring 2020 due to COVID-19. The nonexperimental study of archival data was designed to explore three subgroups of third-grade students’ i-Ready reading diagnostic scale scores from five different assessment periods: before school closures in January 2020 and four subsequent assessment periods after face-to-face instruction resumed in fall 2020. The three subgroups included: the initial cohort (N = 2006), which did not include students in Exceptional Student Education (N = 580), and students who were designated as English Language Learners (N = 169). The subgroups did not include students who had been retained at any point in the past. Descriptive statistics were computed for each of the subgroups and reported. The mean scale scores of each subgroup were compared to the 2018-2019 i-Ready national norms for each of the five assessment periods. The results of the comparisons revealed that each subgroup’s mean reading scale scores were significantly different from the national norm groups’ mean reading scale scores. The mean reading scores of each subgroup were significantly lower (p < 0.01) than the mean scores of the 2018-2019 national norm groups. Although the students in each of the three subgroups demonstrated small increments of reading progress over time, the rate of progress was not commensurate with the 2018-2019 national norm group’s rate of progress. This study adds to the body of literature on the influence of COVID-19, school closures, and remote instruction among elementary learners.

COVID-19, Pandemic, Reading Performance, Reading Achievement, Elementary Education, Reading Development, i-Ready

Goodman, T. , LeBlanc, P. and LeBlanc, W. (2024) An Exploratory Study of Elementary School Students’ Reading Performance Scores before and after COVID-19. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 12, 504-518. doi: 10.4236/jss.2024.125029.