Two years into the pandemic, public schools are struggling to help students recover from the extensive academic disruptions caused by COVID-19. While many students are lagging academically, suffering from what some educators call "unfinished learning," experts say there are steps teachers and parents can take to help kids catch up, and to minimize the impact on the rest of their academic journey.
“We should all feel an extreme sense of urgency around getting kids back on academic track,” says Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research. “Not everybody is off track, but the great majority of kids are behind where they would have been had we not had a pandemic.”
Though some have used the term "COVID learning loss," most students did not actually slide backward in their learning during the pandemic. But research shows the majority did not make the gains expected in a typical year, and that achievement gaps have widened.
Students at high-poverty schools experienced the biggest setbacks, which have continued in the past year, says Megan Kuhfeld, a senior research scientist at the Collaborative for Student Growth at NWEA.
An analysis by the consulting group McKinsey & Company found that, on average, students finished the 2020-21 school year five months behind in math and four months behind in reading — but at low-income schools, those gaps grew to seven months in math and six months in reading. Students at schools where a majority of students are Black or Hispanic also fell further behind, by six months in both math and reading for majority-Black schools and six months in math and five in reading for majority-Hispanic schools.
“Differences in the impact of the pandemic have not been equal,” Kuhfeld says. “It’s exacerbated existing inequalities in terms of schools that had resources and schools that didn't have resources before the pandemic.”
The long-term effect could be costly: This generation of students risks losing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings, or about 14 percent of today’s global GDP, as a result of COVID-19-related school closures, according to a recent report from the World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF...
In Tennessee, over the next three years, 150,000 students will receive high-dosage tutoring, which means frequent tutoring sessions with high-quality instructors, Penny Schwinn, commissioner of education for Tennessee, recently told an Education Writers Association webinar. The state is teaming up with community partners to offer micro-grants to low-income families, allowing them to select from a range of tutors.
It's a massive program,” Schwinn says. Tennessee is also expanding summer and after-school programming, and ensuring that the additional learning connects to the regular classroom by using the same high-quality curricula and instructional materials, she says.
Other schools are using federal relief funds to hire more teachers. Dayton Public Schools, for example, hired 96 additional teachers for reading and math instruction in grades 1 through 3, according to the Dayton Daily News, allowing two teachers to serve each classroo
“Due to the reduced class size, teachers can work with smaller groups of students, identify gaps in learning more quickly, and provide the individualized attention needed to close those gaps,” superintendent Elizabeth Lolli told the Daily New
Another tool many districts are trying is “accelerated learning.” Rather than attempting to get through all the previous year’s content students missed, this approach involves teaching grade-level content and providing support as needed. The strategy requires coordination across teaching teams, and can involve tutoring and other interventions, Jamila Newman, a partner at TNTP, said at the EWA webinar..
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