This is the latest roundup in our “Best Of” series, spotlighting top highlights from this year’s coverage as well as the most popular articles we’ve published each month. See more of the standouts from across 2020 right here.

Any student will forever remember 2020 as the year that the classrooms and campuses closed down. As coronavirus cases surged in the spring — and then again in the autumn — educators, families and district leaders did their best to pivot to a socially-distanced Plan B, building a new system of remote instruction overnight in hopes of maintaining learning and community.

Any education journalist will remember 2020 as the year that all the planned student profiles, school spotlights and policy investigations got thrown out the window as we scrambled to capture and process the disorienting new normal of virtual classrooms. Here at The 74, our top stories from the past nine months were dominated by our reporting in this area, by features that framed the challenges and opportunities of distance learning, that surfaced solutions and innovations that were working for some districts, and that pointed to the bigger questions of how disrupted back-to-back school years may lead to long-term consequences for this generation of students.

As we approach the new year, we’re continuing to report on America’s evolving, patchwork education system via our coronavirus education reporting project at The74Million.org/PANDEMIC. With school campuses open in some states and not others, with some families preferring in-person classes or remote learning alternatives, and with some individual classrooms being forced to close in rolling 14-day increments with new coronavirus breakouts, it’s clear that our education system will begin 2021 in a similar state of turmoil. (Get our latest reporting on schools and the pandemic delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for The 74 Newsletter)

But with the first vaccines being administered this month, we’re seeing our first glimpse of a light at the end of this chaotic tunnel — hope that the virus will quickly dissipate, that schools will fully reopen, and that we’ll then find a way to help all of America’s 74 million children catch up. Here are our 20 most read and shared articles of the year:

Rambo-Hernandez, Makel, Peters, & Plucker (2020)

New Research Predicts Steep COVID Learning Losses Will Widen Already Dramatic Achievement Gaps Within Classrooms / By Beth Hawkins

Learning Loss: In the days immediately following the pandemic-related closure of schools throughout the country this past spring, researchers at the nonprofit assessment organization NWEA predicted that whatever school looks like in the fall, students will start the year with significant gaps. In June, they also began warning that the already wide array of student achievement present in individual classrooms in a normal year is likely to swell dramatically. In 2016, researchers at NWEA and four universities determined that on average, the range of academic abilities within a single classroom spans five to seven grades, with one-fourth on grade level in math and just 14 percent in reading. “All of this is in a typical year,” one of the researchers, Texas A&M University Professor Karen Rambo-Hernandez, told Beth Hawkins. “Next year is not going to look like a typical year.” Read the full story.

The issues of ‘COVID Slide’, learning loss and classroom inequity appeared regularly on the site through 2020. A few other notable examples from the year:

— Even Further Ahead: New data suggest pandemic may not just be leaving low-income students behind; it may be propelling wealthier ones even further ahead (Read the full story)

— Teaching Time: How much learning time are students getting? In 7 of America’s largest school districts, less than normal — and in 3, they’re getting more (Read the full story)

— Missing Students: Lost learning, lost students — COVID slide is not as steep as predicted, NWEA study finds, but 1 in 4 kids was missing from fall exams (Read the full story)

— Learning Loss Research: Students could have lost as much as 232 days of learning in math during first four months of largely virtual schooling (Read the full story)

— What History Tells Us: What lasting academic (and economic) effects could coronavirus shutdowns have on this generation of students? Some alarming data points from research on previous disasters (Read the full analysis)

Carter Mauer (Wendy Mauer)

Parents (and Lawyers) Say Distance Learning Failed Too Many Special Education Students. As Fall Approaches, Families Wonder If Their Children Will Lose Another School Year / By Linda Jacobson

Special Education: A number of special education parents said their children didn’t receive services during school closures in the spring. That’s why, as Linda Jacobson reported over the summer, organizations such as the School Superintendents Association believed lawsuits and due process complaints were on the horizon, and that’s why they asked Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to waive federal special education laws as long as schools are trying to teach students remotely. But experts warned The 74 that there’s no proof districts are facing more complaints than usual and that as long as districts communicate frequently with families they’re more likely to avoid complaints — even if schools remain closed. Boston University’s Nathan Jones, an expert on special education, also stressed that going into this fall, it was important to focus on strong academic interventions to help students regain what they’ve lost. Read the full story.

— From March: ‘Absolutely, I’m worried’ — For children with special needs, unprecedented coronavirus school closures bring confusion, uncertainty (Read the full story)

Students at Kilombo Academic and Cultural Institute (Tashiya Umoja-Mkanga)

When the Point of the Pod Is Equity: How Small Grants Are Empowering Parents of Underserved Students to Form Pandemic Microschools / By Beth Hawkins

Remote Learning: A six-child school with a focus on Black girl magic. Bilingual materials for a living-room preschool in an English-only state. Lessons rich with art and self-expression for six foster kids. A curriculum built for kids affected by incarceration. The first round of microschool grants announced by the National Parents Union are nothing like the pandemic pods described in one news story after another last summer: Wealthy parents banding together to hire a teacher or take turns overseeing distance learning. The young organization’s inaugural grants were intended to support families often failed by traditional schools, so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that many of the winning proposals center on celebrating underserved students’ heritage or meeting specific, frequently overlooked needs. Beth Hawkins talks to several grantees about their kids and their plans. Read the full story.

— Case Study — Pods to Augment Remote Learning: In parks, backyards and old storefronts across Los Angeles, small groups offer children some of what they’ve lost in months of online instruction (Read the full feature)

How Missing Zoom Classes Could Funnel Kids into the Juvenile Justice System — And Why Some Experts Say Now is the Time to Reform Truancy Rules / By Mark Keierleber

Discipline: In communities across the country, social workers are walking door to door in search of millions of students their schools have deemed “missing” — a stark reality as districts combat an absenteeism crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic. Despite longstanding “compulsory education” laws that require students to attend school or face punishment — including fines and incarceration in some states — many districts have avoided pushing students into the juvenile justice system for truancy during the pandemic. But as growing evidence suggest that such an approach is counterproductive, some experts worry about what could come next. “Pretty soon, I think that folks are going to start relying on the stick more than they have been,” said Rey Saldaña, CEO of the nonprofit Communities in Schools. “That’ll be the completely wrong conversation to have because these students don’t need truancy court, they don’t need fines.” Rather than being willfully defiant, truant students are often suffering from homelessness or violence, he said. “They need interventions, they don’t need to be seen by a judge.”