The effect of COVID on Oral Reading Fluency during the 2020–2021 Academic Year

Education has faced unprecedented disruption during the COVID pandemic. Understanding how students have adapted as we have entered a different phase of the pandemic and some communities have returned to more typical schooling will inform a suite of policy interventions and subsequent research. We use data from an oral reading fluency assessment---a rapid assessment taking only a few minutes that measures a fundamental reading skill---to examine COVID’s effects on children’s reading ability during the pandemic. We find that students in the first 200 days of the 2020--2021 school year tended to experience slower growth in ORF relative to pre-pandemic years. We also observed slower growth in districts with a high percentage of English language learners (ELLs) and/or students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch (FRL). These findings offer valuable insight into the effect of COVID on one of the most fundamental skills taught to children.