Modeling Reading Ability Gain in Kindergarten Children during COVID-19 School Closures

Abstract

By 15 April 2020, more than 1.5 billion students worldwide experienced school closures in an effort to slow the spread of a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), during the worldwide coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. These interruptions in formal in-person educational experiences caused adverse consequences on school-age children’s academic outcomes. Using a pre-existing database, we calculated changes in children’s reading ability without formal education (i.e., the summer months). The resultant models predicted that the rate of reading ability gain in kindergarten children during COVID-19 school closures without formal in-person education will decrease 66% (2.46 vs. 7.17 points/100 days), compared to the business-as-usual scenario, resulting in a 31% less reading ability gain from 1 January 2020 to 1 September 2020. Additionally, the model predicted that kindergarten children who have books read to them daily would have 2.3 points less loss (42%) compared to those who do not, who are predicted to have a 5.6-point loss during the same time period. Even though reading books to children will not substitute the critical role of formal education in teaching children how to read, families, educators, and policy makers can promote this simple strategy to facilitate and maintain reading ability gain during school closures, which may be a common occurrence as nations see the public health benefits of physical distancing for the current and future pandemic outbreaks.

Unprepared management decreases education performance in kindergartens during Covid-19 pandemic

“…Although distance learning has vast possibilities to improve students' development, it still cannot replace the direct instruction model [24]. Bao et al [25] reported that "learning from home" reduces kindergarten students' reading ability. Wulandari and Purwanta [8] found a similar trend that the achievement of children's social-emotional skills decreased during the Covid-19 pandemic.…”

“…Some countries show the successful implementation of online learning [6]. Unfortunately, more researchers report the failures of online learning implementation [7]- [9]. Failures in carrying out online learning activities are also monitored in Indonesia.…”

COVID-19 and Primary School 1st Grade in Turkey: Starting Primary School in The Pandemic Based on Teachers' Views

“…The results of the study reveal data on the positive support of emergency remote teaching for 1st grade students who have reading problems. In the study conducted by Bao et al (2020), first reading activities are tried to be gained by emergency remote teaching. When the results of the study are compared with the previous scientific data obtained in face-to-face education, a decrease of 31% is observed.…”

Early Childhood and Lockdown: The Challenge of Building a Virtual Mutual Support Network between Children, Families and School for Sustainable Education and Increasing Their Well-Being

“…Much of the published literature on the impact of the pandemic on education focuses on the stages of compulsory education, post-compulsory education, and, most especially, higher education. In only 60% of countries was distance education developed for the early childhood education stage [17], although 69% of students were unable to participate for various reasons [17], and in the case of the USA, nearly 40% of children did not participate regularly in virtualized education [35]. At this educational stage, and given the difficulty of virtualization of education due to the fact that contact, experimentation, and interaction between peers is fundamental [25,32,34], the family again becomes indispensable in order to develop the educational process [17,24,25,29,32,34], either by helping children to concentrate [25,29,33] or by accompanying them in activities [24,29,34], which again translates into an increase in educational inequalities [36].…”