What happens when 40% of a generation cannot function at school? Signs are emerging that this may happen with the children who were 0-6 years old during COVID-19, now in grades K-6.
While some children were buffered by extra supports at home, large swaths of the population were not so fortunate. A 2021-2022 national report found that 4 out of 10 students had faced at least one adverse experience in their families, such as economic hardship, divorce or incarceration (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2021).
“Pandemic learning loss” does not fully convey the gravity of the problem from the abrupt disruption to home and school life. Our country is now at a confluence of several crises:
- Reading crisis – Although only about a third of 4th graders were proficient in reading before the pandemic, even fewer of them are after (NAEP, 2024). And the backslide is continuing year after year.
- Special ed crisis – Although about 20% of children have a reading/learning disability, or dyslexia, barely half of them get special services at school historically (Cassidy et al., 2023). Dyslexia has the biggest share of students in special ed. And special ed had to take in a million more students just in the past 5 years (The Advocacy Institute, 2024).
- School funding crisis – Although U.S. schools already spend over $120 billion a year on special ed nationwide, they still collectively face at least $10 billion shortfalls annually (NCLD, 2023). And special ed expenditures are increasing by double digits in some states (Wastvedt, 2018).
- Teacher shortage crisis – Although the special ed population is increasing, schools face a severe shortage of trained teachers (Peyton & Acosta, 2022). And teacher preparation programs have declining enrollment.
The pandemic affected many aspects of children’s development. One of the most critical is language development owing to its broad and lasting effect on the whole person. Let us review below what the research says, then what practitioners report from the frontlines, and what it means to all of us in the years to come.
COVID-19’s Impact on Delaying Early Childhood Development on Language Skills
The first broad review of studies on pandemic effects on early language development was just published this year (Zuniga-Montanez et al., 2025). About 90% of these studies covered North America and Europe.
The review concluded that generally the pandemic negatively impacted language perception and the development of vocabulary and phrasal units (morphosyntax). The review considered research on infants to 6-year-olds. Literacy, school readiness and general communication skills were all affected negatively. The socioeconomically disadvantaged took a bigger brunt of the pandemic impact.
These findings are disconcerting, considering that research subjects were from the typical population, not those with learning and other disabilities.
Longitudinal Study Reveals Language Processing Disorders in Pandemic-Born Children
We really need to see in detail how infants and toddlers performed linguistically during the pandemic compared to their predecessors. For this, we turn to the results of controlled experiments.
The first longitudinal study on early language development in infants born during COVID-19 was published last August (Pejovic et al., 2024). This study tracked participants through their first 2.5 years of life. The children born during the pandemic scored noticeably lower than their pre-pandemic cohort on the linguistic measures studied.
Speech comes as a continuous stream. Infants have to recognize word boundaries–where one word begins and ends–to learn new words and develop their vocabulary. Pre-pandemic, infants as young as 4 months can segment words in the speech chain. Yet their pandemic cohorts could not do so even at 12 months. Pre-pandemic, even infants at risk for language impairment could do this by 12 months.
In their second year, the pandemic cohort did not seem to comprehend half the words that were familiar to their pre-pandemic predecessors, like “ball” and “bed.”
Typically, two-year-olds create two-word combinations, like “my bunny” and “boot off.” Pre-pandemic, only about 12% of two-year-olds had not reached this two-word stage. With the pandemic group, the number doubled to 24%.
Even at 30 months, the pandemic group still lagged behind in language reception and expression. These children scored lower in vocabulary development and conversational turn-taking.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Language Delays Create Snowball Effect
Turn-taking is important because it demonstrates a child’s ability to keep the conversation going. Initially, the conversation ends with a one-word answer from a young child. Later, the child learns to execute a “Continue” by adding a comment that elicits a second question from the adult, and so forth. The longer the child converses with an adult, the more opportunities to learn new words and expressions.
The snowballing effect is well known in language acquisition research. The language development of verbally precocious children accelerates as their communicative ability encourages caretakers to interact with them. Their verbal talent creates more opportunities for them to engage in language-rich environments, in an increasingly advantageous cycle (Hoh, 2005). Conversely, children who are verbally less adept fall further and further behind.
Practitioners Report Alarming Increase in Language Processing Disorders Post-Pandemic
We know less about the adverse effects of COVID-19 because conditions at that time restricted and impeded research investigations. Thus, in addition to peer-reviewed articles, practitioner-based reports give us more glimpses into the pandemic impact.
Last June, the Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center in North Carolina reported that the incidence of speech-language delays had more than doubled (Stahnke, 2024). These were cases aged 0-12 years. The oldest were 8 years old when lockdowns started in 2020.
Historically, around 20% of children did not pass the Charlotte Center’s speech-language screenings. But since 2021, that number has stayed at over 40%. This doubling in incidence is also reported by other health providers in their diagnosis of communication-related disorders.
Teachers across several states in a clinical trial also reported that their students in elementary school are not responding to verbal communication at all, as if they cannot process the input.
How Learning Disabilities and Language Disorders Alter Life Outcomes
While alarming, these figures still do not fully fill in the picture of what is happening to a whole generation of children. For that, I turn to my own fieldwork of 3 decades as a clinical linguist.
When language development does not proceed typically, the child may face problems with reception or production or both. Language perception and production are supported by numerous processes in the brain. These language processes have to occur automatically, rapidly, mainly outside of working memory, the mental space for conscious attention.
These are essential criteria because of the volume of verbal input we have to process all day long and the limited capacity of working memory. When processing overload happens, the brain shuts down. The children themselves cannot articulate what is happening inside their heads. Many become frustrated, angry, depressed or defeated. The initial linguistic problem snowballs into a psychosocial one, affecting many aspects of a young person’s life.
Language processing problems often lead to reading difficulty or dyslexia. Students with dyslexia drop out of high school at 3 times the typical rate. The typical juvenile inmate in the U.S. is at the 9th grade level by age but reads at the 4th grade level (Vacca, 2008). The average prison inmate cannot achieve above a 7th grade level academically. At least half of prison inmates have a learning disability like dyslexia.
Again, instead of stats, let us hear their stories. This one is from a 68-year-old man at a California correctional facility. He wrote to me in hopes that our AI program for dyslexia can help his younger counterparts. He said that like many of his fellow inmates, he did not get his high school diploma due to dyslexia.
“When someone asks me a question, or talks to me, about 90% of the time I did not understand what was said…The one quote I have heard many times and can’t stand hearing is ‘Not trying hard enough.'”
He talked about how hard dyslexia was on a kid’s self-esteem and about the tens of thousands “with this and other disorders that end up in prison, or homeless, or took their own life by suicide.”
Special Ed Teacher Shortage Reaches Breaking Point Amid Rising Learning Disabilities
We are already at the breaking point. I am hearing this term used more and more in my conversations with school administrators nationwide, especially Directors of Special Ed.
Consider the numbers again:
- Pre-pandemic, the number of struggling learners with dyslexia was already double the number supported in special ed.
- Since the pandemic, the number of two-year-olds who had not reached important linguistic milestones has doubled.
- In some regions, the number of children aged 0-12 years with speech-language delays has doubled to 40%.
Researchers call struggling readers who do not improve with intervention “non-responders.” If the public school system could barely handle these non-responders before COVID-19, imagine the problem now when their ranks double.
And the problem in summary is this:
- Ballooning size of the student population that needs special services
- Ballooning cost of special ed
- Urgency in identifying and treating language-related disorders like dyslexia
- Urgency in getting help to the millions of children impacted by the pandemic
Fortunately, this kind of problem can be addressed with a scalable solution. Such a solution using autonomous AI is already being piloted in schools in the U.S. with positive preliminary results.
Addressing Pandemic Learning Loss Requires Urgent, Scalable Solutions
Adoption of new technology usually occurs slowly in education. This need not be the case when advanced innovations simplify the process so that there is no orientation or integration needed with the school’s curriculum and IT system. Dysolve AI fits this criteria, offering no orientation or integration needed. It works on on the web browser and requires no special equipment.
Schools cannot in fact afford to wait anymore when they are already at the precipice. Each year that they delay dealing with the pandemic child crisis means losing a big part of the student body and our future workforce.
References
Cassidy, L., Reggio, K., Shaywitz, B. A. et al. (2023). Prevalence of undiagnosed dyslexia in African-American primary school children. npj Science of Learning, 8, 52. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-023-00204-8
Hoh, P.-S. (2005). The linguistic advantage of the intellectually gifted child: An empirical study of spontaneous speech. Roeper Review, 27(3), 178-185.
Pejovic, J., Severino, C., Vigario, M., & Frota, S. (2024). Prolonged COVID-19 related effects on early language development: A longitudinal study. Early Human Development, 195. doi: 10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2024.106081.
Peyton, D., & Acosta, K. (2022). Understanding special education teacher shortages. State Education Standard, The Journal of the National Association of State Boards of Education, 22(1). https://www.nasbe.org/understanding-special-education-teacher-shortages/
National Assessment of Educational Progress. (2024). The Nation’s Report Card. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/
National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD). (2023). IDEA full funding: Why should Congress invest in special education? Policy & Advocacy. https://ncld.org/news/policy-and-advocacy/idea-full-funding-why-should-congress-invest-in-special-education/
Stahnke, L. (May/June 2024). Elusive words: Confronting the post-pandemic skills gap. The ASHA LeaderLive.
The Advocacy Institute. (2024). How the states stack up: 2024 IDEA Part B determinations. https://www.advocacyinstitute.org/
The Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2021). 2021 KIDS COUNT Data Book: State trends in child well-being. https://www.aecf.org/resources/2021-kids-count-data-book
Vacca, J. S. (2008). Crime can be prevented if schools teach juvenile offenders to read. Children and Youth Services Review, 30(9), 1055-1062.
Wastvedt, S. (May 16, 2018). As schools struggle with costs, special education takes a toll. NPR News. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/05/16/special-education-takes-toll-as-schools-struggle
Zuniga-Montanez, C. et al. (2025). Annual research review: How did COVID-19 affect young children’s language environment and language development? A scoping review. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 66(4), 569-587.
