“BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — The kindergarten crisis of last year, when millions of 5-year-olds spent months outside of classrooms, has become this year’s reading emergency.
As the pandemic enters its third year, a cluster of new studies now show that about a third of children in the youngest grades are missing reading benchmarks, up significantly from before the pandemic.In Virginia, one study found that early reading skills were at a 20-year low this fall, which the researchers described as “alarming.””