The main reason to administer assessments next year is to better understand and address the extent of the gaps in education among students and student populations that have been made worse by the coronavirus pandemic. Low-income students disproportionately lacked access to opportunity and high-quality instruction even before COVID-19 hit.3 Now, in the midst of the pandemic, they are more likely to experience the stressful impacts of the coronavirus outbreak and the economic recession it has helped to create. 4 For example, parents of these students are far more likely to work in “essential” positions, meaning that they cannot work from home and support their children’s learning. 5 Low-income students are also more likely to feel the effects of lost income due to their parents’ job loss.6 Finally, they are more likely to experience the trauma of losing a loved one to the coronavirus.7 Enabling students to learn at their highest levels would require mitigating these traumatic and stressful conditions. Schools cannot play that role unless they know what students are experiencing and, most importantly, how the pandemic has affected their well-being

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