Pandemic-related learning losses in schools have experts looking at changes the educational system may need.
Craig Kelly | The Lima News
LIMA — While signing into law the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, former President George W. Bush said, “Every school has a job to do. And that’s to teach the basics and teach them well. If we want to make sure no child is left behind, every child must learn to read. And every child must learn to add and subtract. If, however, schools don’t perform, if, however, given the new resources, focused resources, they are unable to solve the problem of not educating their children, there must be real consequences.”
There are 244 low-performing schools in the state of Ohio. Four of those schools are located in the immediate area — Auglaize Educational Academy, West Central Learning Academy, Lima North Middle School, and Lima Senior High School. The schools were placed on the list in 2018. Because of COVID, the reporting of scores was skipped in recent years, leaving the Ohio Department of Education with no current data to evaluate what schools could be removed or added from this list, and nothing has been done by the Ohio Department of Education to reassess the schools to see if this list is still valid. It’s possible that other schools should be added and some schools should be removed from this list. An identification of low-performing schools will be conducted this fall.
Improving low-performing schools requires a top to bottom commitment and patience on the part of legislators, school administrators, schools, communities and parents. The results may not be quick or easy but not dealing with an issue as critical as students’ education that does not adequately prepare them for life after school isn’t an option, either.
There is much work to be done, and the challenges for students, educators and parents are considerable. Standardized testing, long seen as the norm for assessing student progress, has faced criticism for not giving a true sense of how well students are learning, especially for those who may face anxiety when taking tests.
Standardized tests, by which students are assessed on a yearly basis, reward a narrow set of skills and more affluent students who have access to specialized instruction. Such tests could overwhelm or label students when what they need are diagnostic assessments and needs-based assessments that assess where they are across a range of domains and what they need going forward. These tests are instrumental in determining Performance Index scores prominently used on a school’s report card. Monies spent on such testing could better be used to supplement grants for low-performing schools.
Some of that criticism has come from Diane Ravitch, a historian of education at New York University.
“Under normal circumstances, without a pandemic, the tests are useless,” she wrote in a 2021 blog post. “[T]he tests do not provide teachers or parents with timely or useful information about students’ progress …The teachers typically are not allowed to see the questions on the tests, they are never allowed to discuss them with students or other teachers, and they never see how their own students responded (rightly or wrongly) to specific questions. The scores are reported 4-6 months after the tests were given. The scores become a way to tell students how they ranked, but not what they need to learn. They serve no diagnostic purpose.”
In 2022, the National Center for Education Statistics conducted a special administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress long-term trend reading and mathematics assessments for age 9 students to examine student achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Average scores for age 9 students in 2022 declined 5 points in reading and 7 points in mathematics compared to 2020. This is the largest average score decline in reading since 1990, and the first ever score decline in mathematics.
Peggy G. Carr, Commissioner of the NCES, said, “We have all been concerned about the short- and longer-term impacts of the pandemic on our children. There’s been much speculation about how shuttered schools and interrupted learning may have affected students’ opportunities to learn. Our own data reveal the pandemic’s toll on education in other ways, including increases in students seeking mental health services, absenteeism, school violence and disruption, cyber bullying and nationwide teacher and staff shortages.”
These drops in scores are alarming and potentially discouraging, especially given the efforts of students to learn and educators to teach in incredibly trying times. Unless you are over one hundred years old, most of us have never lived through a pandemic. There is so much we don’t know about students’ ability to bounce back in these circumstances and what a timeline for recovery will look like. Nor are teachers at fault. Educators had difficult jobs before the pandemic, and now are contending with huge new challenges, many outside their control.
Learning and development have been interrupted and disrupted for millions of students. The only effective response is to use diagnostic tests and other tools to meet each child where he or she is and to devise a plan for making up for the interruptions.
The pandemic has underscored opportunity gaps that put low-income students at a disadvantage relative to their more affluent peers. Opportunity gaps are gaps in access to the conditions and resources that enhance learning and development, and include access to food and nutrition, housing, health insurance and care, and financial relief measures.
One of the most critical opportunity gaps is the uneven access to the devices and internet access critical to learning online. This digital divide made it virtually impossible for some students to learn during the pandemic. Ohio is addressing its broadband issue throughout the state.
In a report for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Aaron Churchill recommends areas in which the Ohio Department of Education can improve its work with low-performing schools:
• Ensure consistent, rigorous state oversight of low-performing schools
• Establish clear, forceful consequences for persistent school failure
• Drive more school improvement funds to low-performing schools implementing effective practices
• Increase transparency about Ohio’s school improvement program
In the meantime, teachers are left with the task of trying to help underperforming students get back on track toward educational success.
Reach Dean Brown at 567-242-0409
