When schools were forced to go remote during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, attention shone on the inequities that had long plagued education.
For example, teachers serving schools with high levels of student poverty were much more likely to report that their students lacked distraction-free and appropriate remote learning workspaces during the pandemic, according to investigation from the US Government Accountability Office. Also during that period, teachers with a high proportion of students classified as English learners were more likely to report that their students had difficulty understanding lessons, completing assignments, and getting help from an adult.
These disparities are transferred to the learning recovery process, according to the results of the school pulse panel. The federal data comes from a national survey of principals, making it unique, according to Allison Socol, vice president of P-12 policy, research and practice at the Education Trust. The non-profit organization aims to promote equity in education.
“I think it’s really powerful to see what directors tell us,” she says. “We are seeing a very similar pattern [to other data sets]and it is that the pandemic had a great impact on students, and that it shed light and aggravated the racial inequities that have existed for a long time ”.
The results are not so surprising: Schools serving more students in poverty and more students who are racial minorities report that they already had more students below grade level before COVID-19 hit. They also report that those numbers skyrocketed during the years after the initial pandemic-related shutdown.
There are many reasons for that, Socol says, and they started before the health crisis, including “long-standing funding and resource inequalities in those schools, and the fact that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on health, impact financial, education impact in low-income communities for a long time”.
What does the data say?
Nationally, 36 percent of students were below grade level before the pandemic. That shot up to 50 percent at the start of the 2021-22 school year, when many districts were still providing remote instruction. That dropped one point to 49 percent at the start of the 2022-23 school year, when almost all schools brought students back to campus.
When broken down by student ethnicity, schools with the lowest proportion of minority students (25 percent or less of the student population) started with fewer students below grade level and had relatively smaller increases in lagging students for fall 2021.
At the other end of the spectrum, schools with the highest proportion of minority students (more than 75 percent of their enrollment) started with half of their students below grade level before the pandemic. That rose to a whopping 64 percent at the start of the 2021-22 school year, though it fell to 61 percent in the fall of 2022.
How poverty comes into play
The picture was similar when schools were ranked based on poverty rates in surrounding neighborhoods. Schools were designated as “high poverty” or “low poverty” based on their surrounding neighborhood household income. Researchers considered areas where household income was greater than about $55,500, more than twice the federal poverty line, to be “low poverty.” Those with household income below that threshold were categorized as “high poverty.”
Schools serving low-poverty neighborhoods had fewer students who were behind in grade level before and after the pandemic. At schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, nearly half of the students were behind before the pandemic. That rate rose to 63 percent at the start of the 2021-22 school year, but improved by two percentage points in the fall of 2022.
lack of progress
What that data doesn’t show is much success in getting students, at the very least, back to the grade-appropriate academic achievement rates they had before the pandemic. The data showed no improvement in the below grade level rate from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022.
But returning to pre-pandemic student fighting rates shouldn’t be the goal, Socol says.
“There were too many students who weren’t getting what they needed to achieve the dreams they had,” says Socol. “We are not going to see progress overnight, and we need to not only get back to normal, but do better than before.”
To that end, the survey found that schools with higher rates of students who are racial minorities and students experiencing poverty were more likely to employ accelerated personalized instruction, family outreach, and professional development in an attempt to help with learning recovery. . AND investigation from the US Government Accountability Office found that, for example, teachers had some success mitigating the decline in learning among English language learners through one-on-one check-ins with students and assigning group work little ones in person.
But Socol says more detailed information is needed on these kinds of efforts. The data from this particular survey is exactly what the name suggests, he reasons: a “pulse” check of how principals feel their schools are doing.
“There are some interesting trends to watch out for, but we are going to rely more on granular data to make decisions,” says Socol. ”For that, we need a lot more transparency, both about how students are doing at each school and where they are. [federal relief] the dollars are leaving, what kind of interventions are being implemented, and the positive impact those interventions are having.”
The field of education already has information about what it takes to help students do better, she says. That includes resources and strategies like a strong and diverse workforce, a rigorous curriculum that prepares students for college and careers, and intensive tutoring tailored to each student’s needs.
“I think what this moment needs is for us to move quickly from asking ‘What does the data say?’ to ‘What do we do with the data we see?’” says Socol.
