Friday News Roundup

Here’s your Friday News Roundup

Schools Face ‘Urgency Gap’ on Pandemic Recovery: 5 Takeaways from New Study (The 74)

The 74 reported this week that “New research on post-pandemic student achievement presents a sobering picture, offering a reality check for anyone who might think recovery is proceeding apace.”

“The study, from CALDER at the American Institutes for Research, NWEA and Harvard University, suggest school districts should do more. ‘We need more kids to get more hours of interventions’ said CALDER’s Dan Goldhaber.”

In addition to more hours of interventions, the study presented five big takeaways:

1. Districts stopped the bleeding in the 2021-22 school year.
2. Beyond that, though, results are mixed.
3. Two big problems: implementation and scale
4. Schools share the blame with parents, who may have an inaccurate picture of their children’s post-COVID achievement.
5. Time is running out on closing gaps.

The problem here is that few school districts ever demonstrate the type of urgency necessary to fix learning deficits, and that was a problem most school districts dealt with pre-pandemic.

Schools Trying to Prioritize Equity Have Their Work Cut Out for Them, Survey Shows (EducationWeek)

EducationWeek Online reported that, “Educators working to make schools into more equitable learning environments where all students can grow and learn with all their academic and social-emotional needs met have their work cut out for them moving forward.”

“In a national EdWeek Research Center survey administered in early October to 824 teachers, and school and district leaders, 65 percent of respondents said they were more concerned now than prior to the pandemic about closing academic opportunity gaps that impact learning for students of different races, socioeconomic levels, disability categories, and English-learner statuses.”

“The systemic inequities that give rise to academic performance gaps plagued public education long before 2020. In the survey, though, educators said that the academic performance gaps they were used to seeing worsened since the start of the pandemic between students of color and their white peers and especially between students from low- and high-income households.”

It sounds like the pandemic just made a bad situation worse.

3 Reasons Your District Needs a Theory of Change for Equity Work (EducationWeek)

Terrance L. Green is the creator of the Racially Just School Podcast and an associated professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

Green encourages traditional districts to strive for three positive outcomes to achieve equity by developing the three into a theory of change. The three positive outcomes are:

1. “Generate racially-just north stars.”
2. “Foster solidarity with Black youth and families.”
3. “Dismantle and rebuild system.”

I like the third suggested outcome the best. You know why?

Because the traditional system is not going to make itself equitable for black, brown, and poor kids on its own. If they were, it would have already happened.

The system needs to be dismantled and rebuilt.

Fall Test Scores Show a Slow, Uneven Academic Rebound (Chalkbeat)

According to an article in Chalkbeat this week, “Students are continuing to regain academic ground lost during the pandemic, but a full recovery could take years, according to a new report.”

“Test scores from fall assessments given by testing company NWEA offer the latest look at how students are performing after the pandemic’s disruptions. The data, collected from nearly 7 million third to eighth graders across the U.S. shows the gaps between pre-pandemic and current students are continuing to shrink, though overall scores remain lower than they were pre-COVID.”

“The findings come as a slew of studies have painted a picture of diminished academic performance in the wake of the pandemic, particularly among those who were already struggling.”

“’The distance between test scores for kids now relative to historical trends continues to shrink,’ said Karyn Lewis, an NWEA researcher. ‘[But] it’s not a steady upward march towards recovery – we’re seeing some unevenness.’”

Most of the unevenness comes from our youngest children, those who were kindergartners in 2020.

Chalkbeat goes on to say that “The tightening gaps between pre-pandemic and current cohorts of students came in part thanks to a diminished ‘summer slide’ – meaning students lost less ground between spring and fall in 2022 than in prior years. Still, those strides amount to just a fraction of the overall gaps.”

The traditional public school system is cagey for sure. They want us to concentrate on how long it takes their system to “catch kids up” to pre-pandemic achievement, while ignoring the fact that too many kids, especially those black, brown, and poor, were way behind even before COVID hit.

A ‘New Normal’: National Student Survey Finds Mental Health Top Learning Obstacle (The 74)

The 74 reported this week that “Depression and anxiety continue to plague an overwhelming number of America’s middle and high school students, particularly LGBTQ and students of color, hampering efforts to boost learning form pandemic losses.”

“Secondary students at every grade level maintain depression, stress, and anxiety is the most common barrier to learning. And fewer than half of them, regardless of gender, sexual and racial identity, have an adult they feel comfortable talking to when stressed or upset, according to a new report from YouthTruth.”

Most secondary schools don’t know how to do this type of work. Instead of focusing on making sure our young adults feel good about themselves, the traditional system has worried about improving test scores the past 50 years – at the expense of young people’s mental health.