Students could lose up to five months of their potential reading growth by next school year due to school closures during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new study by educational nonprofits Successful Practices Network and the Center for College & Career Readiness.

Researchers relied on real-time student reading data from 1.6 million students across 1,364 districts using Achieve3000 Literacy, a reading comprehension platform that measures and forecasts Lexile levels, to predict learning trajectories. They looked specifically at how students engaged with the platform before and after school closures.

“If students can remain engaged in online learning from home with a similar degree of usage and performance as they experienced in school, they are likely to maintain their same rate of projected growth,” the study found.