While numerous articles and research reports have focused on understanding the impact of COVID-19 recovery interventions on students in urban and rural schools, fewer have addressed the impact of school closures and efforts to recover lost learning time on children in rural schools. Children in rural areas faced challenges similar to their peers in urban and suburban areas, but infrastructure challenges in many rural places, such as lack of broadband, required tailored approaches guided by educators’ knowledge and connection to their communities. This article examines the impact of Save the Children’s school-age literacy program, supported by 21st Century Community Learning Center grants, comparing growth in literacy between participants and nonparticipants who attended the same rural schools between the 2019–2020 and 2022–2023 school years. I was interested in understanding how participation in programming may have served as a buffer against the adverse effects of school closures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and how participation may have helped students during the COVID-19 recovery school years. The study uses hierarchical linear growth models to examine differences in literacy growth between participants and nonparticipants. This study builds on earlier work to understand the program’s impact using only participant data from the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 school years. Results from the current study found a significant effect of program participation, indicating that the program had success in mitigating the pandemic’s impact on children’s literacy learning. The study also contributes to understanding how elementary-age children in these rural schools have recovered from the effects of school closures.
Julie Meredith (Sun,) studied this question.