COVID didn't cause the problem, but it was like throwing a gas can on the fire. Whatever delay was already occurring got a solid year head start to become even wider and then another year of substantially worsened progress while kids were aging all the same.
My uncle said that from the early 1980s through roughly the winter of 2021, only a single-digit number of students in his intro classes had to drop the course because they were so behind on reading skills they couldn't engage with the material in any way. However, from the spring of 2022 to the fall of 2024, he's had about twenty students drop intro courses for the same reason.
It used to be that a university student with an elementary school reading level was relatively unheard of, but as of late, he's been getting at least one or two per course. He said that while reading and writing problems were worsening over the past decade, it was more of a linear decrease. Now, It's become exponential.
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