CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Two years into the pandemic, students are still suffering from the effects COVID-19 is having on schooling.

According to the college admission test, the ACT, this means kids aren’t as prepared for college, but a local tutor is helping fill those gaps for some students in her area.

What You Need To Know

  • A Brown University study finds kids are struggling with math and reading two years into the pandemic
  • Tutor Angie Lunking sees this firsthand
  • She’s helping fill in the gaps

Angie Lunking, a tutor of 12 years and owner of Action Test Prep and Tutoring, works with high school kids studying for the ACT and SAT.

She says she’s already booked well into the summer, with some of her kids telling her they feel prepared but others don’t. That’s because they feel the impacts of COVID on how they learn.

“They say all of our tests were open book, we were all online at least for a part of it,” she said. “Therefore, if it’s open book, no reason you shouldn’t get a perfect score. But we’re not actually learning things.”

And that’s a feeling backed by research. Brown University published a study finding kids have struggled more with math and reading during these two years of the pandemic.

It’s a learning loss Lunking says kids are still recovering from.

“I am doing a lot more fundamental teaching,” she said. "In the past, I would find kids coming in and they kind of had a good sense in general information and needed some blowing the dust off and cobwebs out of rusty information. But now I find I am teaching information that for them, they feel they never had down, never had a grasp of it.”

She currently tutors virtually and in-person. She finds there are both advantages and disadvantages to tutoring virtually. She says students can fit the tutoring into their schedule more easily, but she also can’t watch how they work through problems.

"I can’t teach them everything through this method,” she said. "It’s about 80% of it.”

For now, she says she’ll continue helping students as they navigate the pandemic. There are many tutoring services in the Charlotte area if your child needs help.