What did we gain? What did we lose? What exactly is learning loss?
BOSTON, MA — Everybody suffered losses during the pandemic: jobs, finances, experiences. Things come and they go. One group has experienced a significant amount of loss: children who had to experience the abrupt transition into e-learning in March 2020. Four years since our return to normalcy after COVID-19, teachers and researchers alike have sought to find a way to help students recover academically.
Learning loss refers to the declining academic achievement of students after the COVID-19 pandemic, and since then has been an ongoing concern that has impacted all communities across the country. According to a study published in Nature Human Behavior, American students lost about 35% of a school year’s worth of study. Math and reading scores fell significantly, dropping to the same levels as two decades ago.
This study fueled evergreen stories and headlines like CNN’s ‘Children lost about 35% of a normal school year’s worth of learning during the pandemic, study suggests’. Or on a local level from Boston Magazine ‘Pandemic learning loss may cost Massachusetts students billions in future earnings’. Leading to an increasing interest in education journalism.
But that’s not the whole picture, in a study done by the Education Recovery Scorecard, which is a collaboration created in 2021 to comprehensively analyze learning loss down to the district level between Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, and the testing company NWEA, found that learning loss was not equal across all students. Researchers looked at data from 7,800 school districts in 40 states, focusing on reading and math scores from state and federal tests for students in third to eighth grades. The study showed that a student’s socioeconomic status played a greater role than was assumed, high household-income students who lived in whiter, richer districts on average fared better than their lower-income peers from more minority-dominated districts. A quarter of schools with high rates of federal lunch subsidies missed two-thirds of a year’s worth of learning compared to the quarter of schools with fewer low-income students on the other end, where they only missed two-fifths of a year’s worth of learning.
Evidence also suggests that other factors such as the quality of online instruction and the severity of lockdown also played a role in student’s test scores, as they impacted children’s ability to return to normal schooling.
Dr. Thomas Kane, one of the researchers in this project from the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research said about his research with Harvard Magazine, “While students are learning again, they’re not making up a substantial amount of ground.” Work from previous years that attempted to narrow the achievement gap between black and white students was reversed due to COVID-19. Online learning furthers the achievement gap between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Suggesting that the impacts could be long-lasting until adulthood.
Corresponding with this research, the following study conducted by the Education Recovery Scorecard in collaboration with the Education Opportunity Project at Stanford on post-pandemic recovery found that in the year after the pandemic, some recovery was achieved but it was not equal. In an interview with Dr Erin Fahle, the co-director of the Educational Opportunity Project explained that much like the learning loss attained, the loss was accrued as some students had more to catch up on than others. However, educators began to face other issues, as post-pandemic chronic absenteeism began to rise and increasing staff shortages in schools. The results regarding the full academic recovery of students remained inconclusive in the first year after COVID-19.
Despite the fast turnaround of research produced on the matter and the varying opinions on how to get students to catch up educationally—there is no conclusive research on what action should be taken to address this issue. And there likely will not be evidence to direct to one method of playing catch up. Neither will there ever be one. There appears to be a gap between what researchers recommended actions and what teachers can do given the resources available to them regarding time and finances. Where researchers are concerned with scores and academic achievement; teachers and parents are more concerned with absenteeism. There appears to be a disconnect between the feasibility of some of these goals when aiming to return to normalcy when so many students cannot afford the additional aid that is required to help them return to normalcy such as quality tutors, summer school, and special needs education. Creating this almost fear-mongering discourse about where children should be regarding their academic achievement.
Without disregarding the issues students face as a collective, how are academic issues being addressed on an individual level for students within certain communities? And what solutions are currently being implemented or currently being tested to address this?