This brief provides a policy perspective into the recent NWEA research on how COVID-19 has affected student learning. It builds on previous research showing achievement levels stalling over the 2022-23 school year from the previous year. This analysis on student learning from grades 3-8 shows that academic recovery has stalled for older learners in the 2022-23 school year. After a slight rebound in the 2021-22 school year, the distance widened against pre-pandemic trends in the 2022-23 school year. Middle school students are further behind than younger students. NWEA researchers analyzed MAP Growth scores for more than 6.7 million students in grades 3-8 in about 20,000 public schools across the country. They looked at achievement and growth trends for students in school during the pandemic years, from 2020-21 through 2022-23. The researchers then compared the performance of those students with that of students in school from 2016-17 to 2018-19. In nearly all grades, student achievement gains fell short of pre-pandemic trends in 2022-23, which stalled progress toward pandemic recovery. There was a bright spot in the results, however: third graders' gains in 2022-23 exceeded pre-COVID trends in both reading and math, while fourth graders were close to meeting pre-COVID trends in reading but were 7% below in math.