Students face major educational setbacks due to the pandemic Tags: HOUSTON – Educating children during the pandemic has proven a challenge with consequences education advocates believe will take years to correct. Some experts have pointed to what they call the COVID-19 slide: cognitive regression among children who forget what they’ve been taught, due to inconsistencies in how they’ve been forced to learn. The back-and-forth between in-person and virtual learning is central to the debate over what to do to make up for what students have lost and parents are left waiting and wondering what will be done to fix the problem.