From the brief: With the COVID-19 pandemic waning, school systems are shifting their focus from surviving the crisis to helping students recover from the social, emotional, and academic toll of the most significant disruption to K-12 education in history. An analysis of data from Zearn encompassing more than two million students in more than 100,000 elementary math classrooms1 shows:

● Students who experienced learning acceleration struggled less and learned more than students who started at the same level but experienced remediation instead.

● Students of color and those from low-income backgrounds were more likely than their white, wealthier peers to experience remediation—even when they had already demonstrated success on grade-level content.

● Learning acceleration was particularly effective for students of color and those from low-income families.

Put simply, this data provides strong evidence that learning acceleration works, and that it could be key to unwinding generations-old academic inequities the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated.