Though it’s been six long years since the COVID-19 outbreak, Southern California is still seeing the detrimental effects it had on our society. One of the areas affected the most, and still hurting, is education, as the pandemic disrupted student learning and altered classroom instruction. One of the aspects of education that has struggled the most is literacy. The ability to not only read and write, but also properly comprehend and analyze reading material. Offering a glimpse at how the pandemic affected literacy rates, I am going to focus on San Bernardino County, one of the largest counties in Southern California. To best visualize the impact, the focus is best shifted to third-grade classrooms. Third grade is one of the most important years for literacy development. As found in a study by Donald J. Hernandez, third graders who fail to develop their literacy skills by the end of the year “struggle in later grades and have a higher dropout rate”. Therefore, third-grade literacy rates are the most crucial to analyze. To best understand how San Bernardino County third graders’ literacy changed due to the pandemic, we need to look at the percentage of students meeting literacy standards before the pandemic and after.
Above is a chart detailing the changes in literacy rates over the course of 10 years. In the first column are the school years, going from the year 2015 to 2025. The second column displays the percentage of third graders who met or exceeded the literacy standard, gathered from an official San Bernardino County performance report on 3rd grade literacy. With data as far back as the 2015-2016 school year, literacy rates sat at 37%, and only continued to increase until 2017-2018, where it went up to 42.90%. After this, for 2018-2019, there is a slight .4% dip. However, once the pandemic hits, literacy rates take a sharp nose dive. Due to the pandemic and lack of state testing during 2019-2020, the percentages are not accounted for. Between 2019 to 2021, when schools reopen for online instruction, literacy rates fell a staggering 11%. 2020-2021 was the lowest year for third-grade literacy at 31.50%, as online instruction impacted many children’s ability to properly learn. Children were not only returning from a long break away from school, as schools had shut down in March of 2020, but they also could not learn in person. Online instruction takes away from personal interaction, keeps children feeling lonely, and requires self-direction that not all children are capable of. Plus, children doing their online learning from home became more susceptible to distractions, especially for children who were forced to learn from troubled households. These unfair conditions had a huge impact on the amount of learning students were able to do.
After the downfall in 2020-2021, the literacy rate has been steadily increasing again. By 2021-2022, class was back to being in-person, but a lot had changed. There were still distance and masking restrictions in place, which still altered the interactions between students and their educators. Most of all though, teachers had to readjust their learning styles to in-person once more, while students had to re-adjust to physically attending class. Most students had grown used to the more relaxed, less strict learning agenda of online classes, and needed to take time to adjust. So, while there is clear growth, the growth is still very small, most likely in part to these obstructions.
As of the most recent school year, 2024-2025, the literacy percentage sits at 37.60%. This exceeds the average literacy rate amongst these ten years, with the average being 33.3%. Children are clearly back into the swing of things, and have better adjusted to an education that is not solely online. While this is good, it’s still relatively low compared to the pre-pandemic rates. However, this should not be something to worry about, but rather a call as to how San Bernardino County can further raise these percentages. There is clear growth happening, and this growth might even be able to surpass pre-pandemic literacy rates, which is why officials should use this data as a starting point on where to go next. Other factors such as school funding, socioeconomic status, and attendance rates are only a few factors that can be further added into this equation to determine what exactly is keeping these literacy rates low after the pandemic, and how can this data then help officials decide what they need to focus on.
There has already been a big push since the pandemic to try to get students back on track, not just at the elementary school level but from preschool to high school. Arlene Molina, San Bernardino County’s director of Preschool Services, told the city, “The pandemic tested every part of our system. But it also revealed our strength.” The literacy rates are a sign that though things took a sharp decline, there is enough drive and work being put into the education system to help lift things back up. The pandemic may have been a setback, but it is also an opportunity to put things back on track and help the schoolchildren of San Bernardino County flourish more than ever before.
