Examining the Impacts of COVID-19 on Upper Elementary Students’ Academic Achievement in South Carolina Rural Title I Schools: Pre-pandemic versus Pandemic

Abstract

From the beginning of American history, disparity and inequity have existed in American society. This applies especially in the realm of education. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic surfaced in America. Adding to the already existing history of systemic educational oppression, the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the many underserved and disadvantaged populations in rural America. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across the nation reverted to various learning modalities such as virtual, hybrid, and in-person models. This nonexperimental quantitative study seeks to examine how the English Language Arts (ELA) academic achievement of rural Title I elementary schools in South Carolina has changed from the pre-pandemic academic school years to the 2021 school year. Along with the disparity and lack of resources that typically exist in rural Title I schools, COVID-19 has created even greater challenges. The purpose of this nonexperimental quantitative study was to examine how students’ ELA-related academic achievement changed in rural Title I elementary schools between the pre-pandemic school years (2017–2018 and 2018–2019) and the 2020–2021 school year, with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Critical Theory as the theoretical framework. To address this purpose, the researcher collected and analyzed data from South Carolina READY ELA assessments for academic school years 2017-2108, 2018-2019, and 2020-2021. No data was collected for the 2019-2020 school year due to the sudden closures of schools in March 2020 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.