How bad did Covid mess up kids reading and math scores?

From the WSJ this morning below. Decided to do a little research with ClaudeAi.

It's pretty clear the pandemic and the decision to have kids stay isolated had a critical impact on learning. My take: A number of private schools made arrangements for children to quickly return to class, reducing the impact. A smart move since COVID for the most part had almost a zero mortality rate for kids. Sadly the impact of isolating these kids will be felt for year. Stupid.

Last winter, the federal government released the results of its semi-annual reading and math tests of fourth- and eighth-graders, assessments that are considered the most authoritative measure of the state of learning in American elementary and middle schools. In nearly every category, the scores had plunged to levels unseen for decades—or ever. On reading tests, 40 percent of fourth-graders and one-third of eighth-graders performed below “basic,” the lowest threshold. A separate assessment of 12th-graders conducted this past spring—the first since schools were shuttered by the COVID pandemic—yielded similarly crushing results. Many graduated from high school without the ability to decipher this sentence. How can I assume that? The test asked them to define the word decipher, and 24 percent got it wrong.

“You can’t believe how low ‘below basic’ is,” says Carol Jago, a former public-school teacher who has served on the board that oversees . . . the National Assessment of Educational Progress. “The things that those kids aren’t able to do is frightening.”