Students’ loss of knowledge may be worse
At the start of any school year, it’s common for educators to assess students’ academic skills. Evidence suggests that, even during normal circumstances, many students return from summer break knowing less than when it began.
But as central Ohio schools prepare for an unprecedented school year complicated by the coronavirus pandemic, teachers are preparing to help students who they expect will have regressed more than usual because of the abrupt COVID-19 closure of schools last spring and the switch to online learning.
It’s what many educators are calling the “COVID slide,” a variation of “summer slide,” a term long used to describe the learning loss that students experience over the seasonal break.
“That’s what keeps us up at night, really — trying to find every way possible to maintain a year’s worth of academic growth for these kids,” said Jamie Lusher, chief academic officer for Grandview Heights schools.
Grandview Heights students in grades K-3 will spend the first days of classes meeting teachers and picking up supplies during scheduled appointments. The experience will include a brief reading exercise to detect whether a child needs tutoring, Lusher said.
The district also set up summer intervention for students who struggled with the sudden shift to online learning in the spring. Most meet-ups were virtual, but some students visited school individually, Lusher said. The district used federal coronavirus relief funds to help pay for it.
Lusher anticipates that more help could be needed in summer 2021.
“We’re going to do whatever it takes to get them back where they need to be,” she said.
Grandview Heights, whose 1,100 students resume classes — only online — on Monday, is the first district in Franklin County to start the 2020-21 school year.
Nearly every district in the county will start the school year online, with start dates staggered throughout the next three weeks. Upper Arlington begins Wednesday. Dublin begins online Aug. 24 but plans to shift to a hybrid of in-person and online learning later.
On Aug. 31, districts on the fringes of the Columbus area, such as Olentangy, Licking Heights and Pickerington, will return with a hybrid of in-person and online learning from day one.
Columbus City Schools, the state’s largest district, enrolling about 50,000 students, and New Albany-plain Township schools have postponed their starts until Sept. 8, the day after Labor Day. Columbus is going solely online, while New Albany delayed its start to get more data on the trend of coronavirus numbers.
Getting students on track is a balancing act, many educators say. At a time when they’re adjusting to disrupted routines, new safety rules and learning online, piling on assessments right away could do them more harm than good.
The Ohio Department of Education’s reopening guidelines for schools suggest assessing students’ educational needs within the first three to six weeks. The document says building relationships first is key.
“First and foremost, we have to make sure they’re comfortable, and safe, and that we’re building community,” said Grandview Heights teacher Lydia Mclaughlin, who was sorting through boxes of supplies to distribute to her fifth graders on Tuesday. “From there, the learning happens.”
The department has resources on its website to help with assessments, aligned with the state’s learning standards. Districts also may use tools from other vendors or ones created internally.
A report from the Northwest Evaluation Association, an Oregon nonprofit that creates assessments used by many Ohio schools, predicts that learning loss caused by the pandemic could have some students retaining only about 70% of typical reading progress and losing 50% or even a full year of math in some grades.
Even in a normal year without a pandemic, summer break has a big impact, according to researchers.
A study published in the American Educational Research Journal in July, analyzing millions of test scores from 2008 to 2016, found that 52% of students experienced learning losses in the five summers between first and sixth grades, losing an average of 39% of their total gains from the year prior.
“‘Learning loss’ is always based on the assumption that kids got to a certain place by the end of the year,” said Eric Anderman, an Ohio State University professor of educational psychology and quantitative research, evaluation, and methodology. “We just can’t make that assumption anymore.”
Those concerns could be especially pronounced among students with special needs and students living in poverty, lacking support at home, or learning English as a second language, said Scott Dimauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.
“There are going to be students who didn’t have learning experiences at the end of the school year,” Dimauro said, “and we’re going to have to make sure we’re reaching them where they are and bringing them back as far as we can.”
In Columbus City Schools, 22% of students did not participate in virtual learning in the spring after schools closed, according to the district.
Tracy Ocasio, the district’s chief academic officer, said teachers will use iready, an online assessment tool, to gauge students’ needs while continuing to teach the standards for each grade level.
“We aren’t focused on remediation,” Ocasio said, because that might push students further behind. “But we’ll build bridges wherever there are learning gaps.”
The district has distributed Google Chromebook laptops and wireless hotspots to students, which she expects will improve participation.
Joceyln Cosgrave, chief academic officer for Reynoldsburg schools, said the state’s suspension of standardized tests in the spring was helpful because that allowed educators to devote extra time to their online instruction.
Although assessments and tutoring might look different this school year — for example, a video chat rather than a classroom meeting — the concept isn’t new, she said.
“This is our job. It’s what we do,” Cosgrave said. “We find out where our kids are, we meet them where they are, and we help them grow.” awidmanneese@dispatch.com @Alissawidman