Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s no secret that everyone is tired of the phrase “COVID learning loss.” While the disruptions to education during the pandemic were very real and, in many cases, quite severe, collectively as a society we seem to have moved on from wanting to discuss the pandemic and its lasting impacts on students. It’s understandable. It was a traumatic time, and everyone did the best they could to get themselves, and their students, through it however they could with the information available at the time.
Yet, as educators, we have to be leaders when it comes to having uncomfortable conversations about our student’s education and wellbeing. And as much as we may want COVID learning loss to be a feature of the past, it is still very much a present reality for many students, even the ones who seem to be incredibly successful.
Case in point: in September, Harvard University launched a new remedial math course for its undergraduate students. Despite being some of the nation’s brightest students, Harvard’s incoming freshmen classes had been exhibiting increasingly concerning gaps in their math knowledge with each post-pandemic year.
Harvard’s Director of Introductory Math, Brendan Kelly, said that his department “investigated a number of different strategies” before deciding to create the new remedial math course, called math MA5, which requires students to meet five days a week (quite unusual for a college course). The primary purpose of MA5 is to provide students with extra support to build up the foundational algebra, geometry, and quantitative reasoning skills that they need to succeed at Harvard.
The fact that so many students no longer arrive at Harvard with the math skills they need to start their 101 classes is absolutely a cause for concern.
However, some believe the lack of standardized tests is to blame, and that if Harvard had simply reinstated ACT/SAT admissions requirements sooner (standardized testing has been reinstated for Fall 2025 students) the tests would have identified the students with problematic learning gaps, and they never would have been admitted to Harvard in the first place.
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That view not only overly simplifies a complex issue but also assumes that there were enough students in the country without any learning gaps that could have been admitted instead. Rather than an either/or situation, it seems to be a both/and one.
Students’ educations were disrupted by the pandemic and the loss of foundational skills, particularly in math, (even among high-performing students) have not been successfully recovered AND reinstating standardized testing, which assess the key foundational skills students need to succeed in college, is important.
Both truths highlight the need for supplemental education for today’s students, whether that’s through one-on-one tutoring or ACT/SAT preparation classes. Even if your student is doing great (and may be Harvard bound themselves!) consider reaching out to Academic Approach to set up tutoring. Or, at the very least, have them take our complimentary ACT/SAT diagnostic exam so you and your student can know exactly where any skills gaps may be. Remember, it’s possible that your student’s math skills are solid, but they struggle with grammar and punctuation rules.
The sooner you know if, how many, and what your student’s specific foundational skills gaps may be, the sooner you can help your student resolve them. While it’s great to know that even schools as prestigious as Harvard are willing to make adjustments to help their students succeed, it would be better not to have to take MA5 at all (if only to avoid having a five-day-a-week class) and resolve any learning gaps before they set foot on campus.