‘The pandemic broke us’: Mass. superintendents see long road to recovery for students - The Boston Globe (2025)

This is despite billions of dollars in federal aid to redress the damage done by prolonged school closures. Math skills have stagnated and reading achievement has worsened. Children who were not yet in high school when schools closed their doors have graduated, less equipped to navigate the world than those who came before.

Dozens of Massachusetts superintendents surveyed by the Globe said it will be years before students catch up. While a minority said their students have already matched pre-pandemic scores or will by the end of next year — six years after schools closed — most said it will take longer.

Even in 2019, students here and across the country were learning less, and the advantages Massachusetts once had in teaching all student groups — rich and poor, white and Black, native English speakers and immigrants learning the language — were shrinking. Today, the state’s first-in-the-country public schools’ status is dependent on demography alone: the children of the rich and educated, in the richest and most educated state, continue to excel.

Many of the hurdles superintendents identified for recovery were already emerging pre-pandemic as well, including increasing student needs, budget crunches, and screen addiction. The pandemic was a “stress test” that schools failed, one veteran leader said.

“It couldn’t have come at a worse time in education,” said interim Cambridge Superintendent David Murphy. “It’s hard to tease apart what was the COVID disruption and what is the challenges public education faces.”

Here’s what superintendents said:

Data from state MCAS tests and the Nation’s Report Card national assessments paint a clear picture: Massachusetts students remain about half a grade level behind 2019 peers and are still falling.

The Globe reached out to the state’s 275 traditional public school district superintendents. Of the 56 superintendents who responded, 24 said their students already have recovered or will by the end of next year.

But most said it will take longer, potentially more than twice that long.

“There are groups of students who experienced a significant disruption to education during their formative years,“ wrote Southbridge Superintendent Jeffrey Villar. ”We do not know what the full impact of that experience will have.”

Some superintendents said if they could repeat 2020, they wouldn’t close schools. Others were proud of how early their districts reopened, some resuming that fall. (Research backs them up, with longer shutdowns linked to more learning loss.)

Sandwich’s Joe Maruszczak suggested it was not just the school shutdowns, however, but how COVID affected all of us.

“The pandemic broke us in many ways, and schools are always a microcosm of society,” he said.

One in four superintendents said students are “simply too far behind” for a smooth recovery, while 39 percent said gaps are too wide between the highest- and lowest-achieving, making differentiating instruction a challenge. National data indicate the gap has been widening for a decade.

Even the youngest students are behind, multiple superintendents noted.

Massachusetts scores peaked before 2019; Grades 3 to 8 students in the state are now about a grade level behind their peak for both subjects, according to an analysis from researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth. While the state has kept its status as top in the nation on the Nation’s Report Card, it’s only because most other states have also declined.

For high-needs students, said New Bedford’s Andrew O’Leary, “The pandemic didn’t derail a smooth trajectory — it deepened long-standing structural neglect.”

Most superintendents said student behavior was as big or bigger a challenge than academics when schools reopened.

“Kids are dysregulated at higher levels than we’ve seen before,” said Stoughton Superintendent Joseph Baeta. “I would argue the adults are as well.”

Again, those issues were cropping up before 2020, Baeta said, but COVID “really skyrocketed the numbers.”

Missed socialization means teachers must teach skills that used to come organically, said Berkley’s Melissa Ryan.

“We took away all the natural learning opportunities,” Ryan said. “We told children to stop sharing.”

Three-quarters of superintendents also cited absenteeism as a struggle.

“Chronic absenteeism is an issue that is dramatically higher than in our pre-pandemic days,” said North Adams Superintendent Barbara Malkas.

The only challenge superintendents named more than absenteeism was increased student needs, whether that’s economic disadvantages, disabilities, social-emotional challenges, or the need to learn English.

“We were having these discussions around more awareness around the socio-emotional needs before the pandemic, and I think the pandemic just exacerbated the needs of our students,” Sandwich’s Maruszczak said.

Higher needs mean increased costs, the superintendents said, including for support staff and transportation. Inflation raised the costs of everything else, and federal relief funds expired.

Overall, more than half of district leaders cited funding as a major challenge, particularly for shrinking rural districts and economically struggling Gateway Cities.

“The infrastructure is in place for recovery, but there is no funding available,” said Matthew Ferron of Hanover.

Rising costs are a particular challenge because state law limits municipalities’ abilities to raise revenue without voter approval, which they don’t always get.

“To balance my budget, my only option is to cut staff,” said Berkley’s Ryan. “There are no guardrails.”

New Bedford’s O’Leary tied the pre-pandemic score decline to budget crises following the Great Recession, an explanation supported by some research.

Districts are also grappling with attracting and retaining quality educators.

”Burnout, retirements, [and] changing career priorities post-pandemic have increased turnover,” said Jill Rossetti, superintendent of Blue Hills Regional Vocational Technical.

About a third of superintendents said cellphones have been a distraction, with several saying they’ve recently banned them. Medford’s Suzanne Galusi said she’d like a statewide legislation on cellphone use in schools.

Some superintendents said tech uptake was a “silver lining” of the pandemic, but others worried schools had become too reliant on classroom technology, with students spending too much class time on school-issued laptops or iPads.

Anne McKenzie, of Hadley, said she also worries about out-of-school phone usage.

“We suspect that screentime outside of school has increased significantly post-pandemic,” she said. “COVID profoundly exacerbated this high-velocity trajectory toward isolation and loneliness.”

Nat Malkus, an education policy scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said cellphones seem closely related to the decade-old achievement decline and widening gaps.

A couple of superintendents said the declining role of state accountability has hurt students and schools.

“Many of the accountability measures that were underlining those reform efforts 30 years ago have been under attack,” said Cambridge’s Murphy.

Some experts have said school accountability laws, such as the federal No Child Left Behind Act, drove student achievement gains. That law was rolled back in 2015, as the inundation of testing proved unpopular.

Other superintendents said stricter state oversight would not necessarily accelerate recovery. O’Leary, in New Bedford, argued that districts have internalized the important parts of state accountability, such as using data, and just need more support.

Despite all the obstacles, every superintendent said their students will catch up. It will just take time.

“Our kids are going to be OK,” said Baeta, in Stoughton. “My students are smarter today than I was. Unfortunately, some of them have to grow up really quickly.”

Christopher Huffaker can be reached at christopher.huffaker@globe.com. Follow him @huffakingit.