From the report: During the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically impacted traditional methods of student learning. Traditional methods of delivery were uprooted by school closures and an unplanned shift to remote learning. Understanding the extent of the impact of students’ lost instructional time and how it can vary among student groups – is critical to understanding current education needs and developing recovery plans to meet those needs. To further this understanding about the impact of students’ lost instructional time, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) and SAS Institute Inc. (SAS) collaborated to leverage existing student assessment data and yield insight into how the pandemic disrupted student learning. Although the pandemic’s impacts are likely far-ranging across many domains, this report focuses on an Impact Analysis that assesses student performance and lost instructional time by comparing students’ pre-pandemic expected performance with their post-pandemic actual performance in the 2020-21 school year. More specifically, this analysis uses student projections to the 2020-21 school year, which represents their pre-pandemic expected performance based on the average schooling experience and then compares these projections to students’ actual performance on the 2020-21 statewide assessments.