Federal probes and parental lawsuits say districts neglected students who needed most support during school shutdowns
Marissa Sladek knew her son Christopher had fallen far behind when she bought him a copy of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. The movie had opened just before the pandemic, and survival-themed fiction was his favorite.
The Covid lockdown had cut him off from the literacy support he had been receiving as a special education student. During remote learning sessions, his autism and learning disabilities left him unable to navigate email or video-communication applications. By the following year, when he entered the seventh grade, Christopher was reading near a third grade level.