What happens when 40 percent of a generation cannot function effectively at school? Signs are emerging that this may happen with the children who were 0 to 6 years old during COVID-19, now in grades K through 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 fourth graders were proficient in reading before the pandemic, even fewer of them are after (NAEP, 2024).
- Special ed crisis: Although about 20 percent 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 five 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).
- Teacher shortage crisis: Although the special ed population is increasing, schools face a severe shortage of trained teachers (Peyton & Acosta, 2022).
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.
First Scoping Review and Longitudinal Study
The first broad review of studies on pandemic effects on early language development was just published this year (Zuniga-Montanez et al., 2025). The review concluded that literacy, school readiness, and general communication skills were all affected negatively by the pandemic. These findings are disconcerting, considering that research subjects were from the typical population, not those with learning and other disabilities.
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.
Speech comes as a continuous stream. Infants have to recognize word boundaries to acquire language. Pre-pandemic, infants as young as 4 months could 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.
Pre-pandemic, only about 12 percent of 2-year-olds had not reached the two-word stage. With the pandemic group, the number doubled to 24 percent.
Practitioner-Based Reports
We know less about the adverse effects of COVID-19 because conditions at that time restricted and impeded research investigations. 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).
Historically, around 20 percent of children did not pass the Charlotte Center’s speech-language screenings. But since 2021, that number has stayed at over 40 percent. This doubling in incidence is also reported by other health providers in their diagnosis of communication-related disorders.
The Human Cost
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 three decades as a clinical linguist.
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 three times the typical rate. The typical juvenile inmate in the U.S. is at the ninth-grade level by age but reads at the fourth-grade level (Vacca, 2008). The average prison inmate cannot achieve above a seventh-grade level academically. At least half of prison inmates have a learning disability like dyslexia.
Academic Problems and Skills Essential Reads
Breaking Point
We are already at the breaking point. I am hearing this term used more and more in my conversations with school administrators nationwide.
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.
Not Business as Usual
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.
Schools cannot, in fact, afford to wait 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.
Either we do it right this time, or all of us shoulder the consequences for a lifetime.
