Incomplete Education: “Interrupted Learning” or “Learning Loss”

Because education in the United States remains largely a local matter — city, county, state — it is always difficult to make national generalizations. But it can confidently be written that three consecutive academic years have been compromised: 2019/2020, 2020/2021, and 2021/2022.

The word is carefully chosen: “compromised.”

There has been some debate about the nomenclature. Some have rejected the phrase “learning loss” as too negative or too alarmist. Some have suggested the phrase “interrupted learning.”

Many of the compromises in these three consecutive years can be placed into one of two categories: reduction in curriculum and content, or reduction in work habits and study skills.

The degree of these deficits varies from city to city, county to county, and state to state, but in any case, a college admissions officer looking at applications from students who graduate from high school in 2022 or 2023 will need to do some reckoning. Universities will doubtless need to increase remediation efforts.