Cincinnati, Ohio – Almost four years since the pandemic began, schools are still trying to catch kids up with their studies.

A study called the Education Recovery Scorecard shows that Ohio’s recovery after the pandemic is not the same everywhere, with schools in areas with a lot of poverty still facing big challenges.

Read also: CINCINNATI WOMAN ADMITS TO LAUNDERING MILLIONS FOR ONLINE ROMANCE SCAMS

Cincinnati Public Schools, sharing that their students are about a year and a half behind in learning, is one of the many districts in the country striving to bring students up to the learning levels they were at before the pandemic.

There’s some positive news, though. According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, the efforts to improve education in Cincinnati Public Schools are showing hopeful signs.

This research, looking at how well students are doing in reading and math—key subjects for understanding if they’re at the right grade level—found that Cincinnati Public Schools did better than other big city schools in these areas.

From 2019 to 2022, in Ohio, students fell behind by about half a grade in math and reading.

In districts with a lot of poverty, like Cincinnati, Akron, Springfield City, Canton, and Columbus City, the situation was worse, with these areas seeing losses of more than three-quarters of a grade.

Read also: BASF EXPANDS CINCINNATI PLANT TO MEET GROWING DEMAND FOR ECO-FRIENDLY PRODUCTS

This year, among the 44 biggest urban school districts part of the Council of Great City Schools, Cincinnati’s comeback was ranked second in the country, and its improvement in reading was 16th. Schools of similar size in other cities were still about a full grade behind in math.

“These are still areas of challenge, because we’re not quite where we want to be yet. We celebrate the improvement, we celebrate the growth, we still have a long way to grow. Essentially, what this data is telling us, we’ve been able to recover almost a year and three quarters of what our students lost. So focusing on that current year as well as really digging into that year and a half they lost during COVID,” said CPS Superintendent Iranetta Wright.

Local 12 asked Wright about the district’s plans to continue its upward recovery trend.

“Of course we’re still looking at third grade reading, really closing the gap between our Black students and our non-Black students, we’re looking at making sure that our algebra 1 scores are on target for our students as they’re first time test-takers and of course, we’re really wanting to make sure we’re focusing on graduation rate. Because at the end of the day, it’s really about making sure students graduate, and they graduate proficient and do whatever it is that they choose to do as an individual,” said Wright.

Read also: EPA ALLOCATES $210 MILLION TO OHIO FOR WATER INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS

Ohio received $6.9 billion in federal COVID-19 recovery dollars. As of January 2024, the state still has $1.5 billion of that.