Signs of Recovery for English Learners’ Proficiency After Pandemic

By Hannah Haynes

A new report examining WIDA ACCESS Online scores from 2018 to 2025 offers a cautiously hopeful update: After years of pandemic-related decline, average English language proficiency has stopped falling and, for the first time since 2020, ticked upward. The report is the fourth installment since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and examines how English learners (ELs) across the WIDA Consortium are faring in their English proficiency. 

WIDA researchers Glenn Alan Poole and Narék Sahakyan, authors of the report, stress that though this is positive news, recovery is incomplete, uneven and heavily shaped by local context. Proficiency levels remain below where they were before the pandemic, and some groups of students, particularly the youngest learners and Hispanic language learners, continue to face steep challenges. 

A Meaningful Shift in the Trend 

One of the clearest takeaways from this fourth report, Examining English Learner Testing, Proficiency, and Growth: Recovery Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, is that the 2024-2025 academic year potentially marks a turning point. 

“For the first time since consortium-wide averages in overall English proficiency decreased due to widespread school closures and disruptions related to the pandemic, overall scores for ELs were higher in 2025 than in the prior year,” said Poole. 

This shift is small but meaningful. After several consecutive years of declining averages across all grade-level clusters and language domains, the reversal provides hints of recovery. New in this report is an analysis of long-term growth, which also points toward recovery: Students’ multi-year gains are approaching levels seen before the pandemic. Still, Poole and Sahakyan emphasize caution. “We see that average overall proficiency has stopped declining,” they explain. “But we are not yet seeing substantial increases in proficiency and growth, and local trends can be really different from place to place.” 

What’s Impacting Recovery? 

The report highlights how long-lasting the effects of pandemic disruptions have been. The overall trends in the report represent the collective results from many local contexts, meaning that the way in which educators, schools and districts were helping students also varied from place to place. 

“We would love to see more research into what educators were doing locally to respond to the pandemic. We do know that the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding from the federal government totaling nearly $200 billion enabled much of that work,” Sahakyan said. “Since ESSER funding expired in September 2024, it is difficult to predict whether the initial signs of recovery will gather momentum, stall and stagnate, or disappear.” 

Early Learners’ Recovery Differs 

Notably, kindergarten and first-grade ELs were the only group to show declines in overall English proficiency in 2024-2025. Poole suggests this may reflect lower English proficiency among students entering school compared to peers in higher grades. This could be due to the pandemic impacting students at different points in their education. 

Additional research into the experiences of students who started school during different phases of the pandemic is underway.

Examining Domains

ACCESS Online assesses four language domains: Reading and Listening (receptive skills), and Speaking and Writing (productive skills). While trends vary by grade and domain, one pattern stands out: Speaking scores in 2025 moved closer to pre-pandemic averages than scores in other domains. 

During the height of the pandemic, Speaking proficiency and growth declined sharply, likely reflecting reduced opportunities for speaking with teachers and peers. Annual Speaking growth rebounded relatively quickly after 2021, contributing to stronger recent averages. 

“Learning in the Speaking domain may have been particularly susceptible to disruptions,” Poole suggests, “but perhaps also more responsive to instructional recovery.” 

Other domains, especially Listening and Writing in early grades, continue to lag, pointing to areas where more targeted support may be needed. 

Reasons for Optimism and Overall Takeaways 

There are real reasons for optimism in the report. In 2024-2025, overall proficiency and growth did not continue their post-pandemic decline, and in many cases, growth returned to or exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Scores in the Reading domain, in particular, have proved resilient, especially in middle and high school grades. Analyzing trends at the local level may also generate optimism by identifying opportunities for more targeted interventions to support students’ English language acquisition. 

At the same time, the data highlights where focused attention is still needed. Early elementary Listening and Writing scores remain well below pre-pandemic averages, and disparities persist — especially for ELs from Hispanic backgrounds, who appear to have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. 

Above all, Poole and Sahakyan encourage educators to see the report not as a definitive judgement but as a context-setting resource. 

“While WIDA-wide averages can be helpful as a baseline over time,” Sahakyan said, “we recommend examining the same trends within a given state or district as this would provide more context for educators and policymakers.” 

Poole and Sahakyan’s report adds to a growing understanding of how large-scale disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are rippling through the education system over time. Recovery is not captured by a single metric nor achieved in a single year. But with evidence of stabilizing proficiency and strengthening growth, the data suggests that many ELs and their educators are moving in the right direction.