The impact of COVID-19 on the achievement of public school students in British Columbia: A multilevel analysis on the results from the province-wide standardized assessment

This study aims to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on public school students' achievement by collecting and analyzing the two-year test results from the Foundational Skills Assessment, a province-wide standardized test administered annually in British Columbia, Canada. Multilevel modeling was conducted to analyze whether the impact of COVID-19 correlated with local school district demographics, including the percentage of indigenous students, the percentage of students with special needs, and the median household income. The results revealed that the impact of COVID-19 on students' literacy and numeracy achievement was associated with the percentage of students with special needs and median household incomes in the local school districts. Implications of the findings for postpandemic revitalization were discussed.