GREENSBORO, N.C. — Guilford County Schools students are showing a decline in academic performance according to results from several assessments taken over the last few months.

The school system says it is seeing the toll the pandemic and the upheaval of education is having on students' grades and performance exams.

GCS Chief Academic Officer Dr. Whitney Oakley explains students learning remotely are not nearly as proficient as those learning in-person.

The overall consensus indicates students who have been in in-person classes the longest have performed at a higher level compared to those who have not had face-to-face instruction.

"Parents and students have done the best that they can under some very, very difficult circumstances, so I just think we have to remember we've lost a large chunk of last year and then we've done the remote learning all the way up until this point this year and it's going to take years to recover," Oakley emphasizes.

High school fall end-of-course test scores and participation were down across all subjects by as much as 30% because the state of North Carolina required students to come into the building to take their assessments, so many students chose to opt out.

The largest performance decline from last fall to this fall was in a math assessment, with a decline of 18.7 percentage points.