“We should thank teachers and principals and superintendents for what they’ve done for American schoolchildren in the last year; their efforts have led to strikingly large improvements in children’s learning. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the recovery has been uneven and we have a long way to go. Academic performance remains lower and more unequal than in 2019 in all but the wealthiest communities in America,” said Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality, Stanford Graduate School of Education, and one of the study’s co-authors.