Post-COVID report cards don’t tell the real story
Parents want the truth after concerning lack of information on kids’ progress
LaShanta Mire’s daughter was thriving in second grade at her public school in Fort Worth, Texas – at least on paper. Her grades were good.
But the child’s assessments told a different story: She did not yet know how to read. She was missing out on crucial content. She wasn’t performing at grade level.
Mire, like possibly millions of parents across the U.S., received flawed information about her daughter and her two other school-age children. After realizing there was a mismatch between her perceptions and the reality, the single mother of five took it upon herself to find a parents’ group to help her navigate school bureaucracies, engage with educators and seek information such as test scores.
After she got the information she needed, Mire transferred the three oldest children to new schools. Now they’re getting grades that offer a more accurate – if sometimes disappointing – picture of their achievement.
“I felt like I was failing my child because the school was failing her,” Mire said of her daughter, now 9. The new school, she said, “doesn’t just give you (good) grades. … You have to earn them.”
Mire’s daughter is part of a generation of children who lost significant academic ground during the pandemic. Four years after the onset of COVID-19, schools are still struggling to get kids caught up. And to get them to show up: Chronic absenteeism remains rampant and in some cases has gotten worse.
Yet schools aren’t adequately communicating these challenges to families and often, in fact, mistakenly communicate that all is well. Research suggests parents are getting limited, if not inaccurate, messages about their kids’ performance.
New survey findings, shared exclusively with USA TODAY, underscore the problem. Nearly half of parents say they want better communication from their kids’ schools – especially about attendance. One-third of parents do not feel well informed about their children’s academic progress and school success, according to the survey from a K-12 communication and data analytics platform called SchoolStatus.
The findings show there’s a disconnect between families and schools when experts say it’s crucial they be in sync.
“Parents assume no news is good news,” said Russ Davis, founder of SchoolStatus – but that’s seldom the case.
Widespread grade inflation
Nearly half (45%) of the respondents in the SchoolStatus survey said communication wasn’t frequent enough, and a similar percentage said they didn’t get messages about the importance of attendance until after their kids missed school.
The gaping disconnect is even more glaring given the growing evidence that chronic absenteeism can take an immense toll on learning and that proactive communication with parents about their kids’ attendance patterns and the benefits of class time can markedly reduce absences.
Most parents said they got some updates about their children’s academic progress, but fewer than one-quarter said they received information and resources to support learning at home.
“There’s a real erosion of connection between school and home,” said Kara Stern, the director of education and engagement at SchoolStatus. The survey findings, she said, “can be summed up into one sentence: Parents want to know.”
They want to know not just their kids’ grades but their progress and where they’re lagging – and how to take action when needed.
Other research also shows a gap between students’ marks on their report cards and those on standardized assessments. Grade inflation is nothing new: Schools have long tended to overstate how well kids are faring, said Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford University who studies education. But it has become especially popular in the aftermath of COVID-19 as schools work hard “to say, ‘We’re back up to where we were before,’ ” he said.
Research conducted by Gallup in partnership with Learning Heroes, a family engagement nonprofit, shows that nearly 9 in 10 parents believe their children are performing at or above grade level – even as other measures indicate the rate of students achieving at that level is far lower.
Few parents in the Gallup/Learning Heroes survey knew their children were behind. Nearly 2 in 3 parents cited report cards as an important source of information about whether their kids were at grade level.
Parents are desperate for accurate information, no matter how demoralizing. As Mire, the mother who relocated her children, put it, “I just need my babies to do better.”
‘After the fact is too late’
Thomas Kane, a Harvard University scholar researching COVID-19 learning loss, said accurate information also needs to arrive swiftly. Parents should be able to act on that information – by signing their children up for summer school or intensive tutoring, for example – before the resources are no longer available.
Shareeda Jones, another single mother of five, had an experience similar to Mire’s: She wasn’t informed until recently that her fifth-grade daughter was reading at a second-grade level. The Washington, D.C., public schooler is doing daily phonics lessons and trying to catch up, but Jones worries she has already lost precious time. The girl now faces the prospect of being held back.
Parents such as Jones – a product of Washington’s public schools – care deeply about ensuring their children are spared the educational neglect they experienced. “A lot of us just don’t understand how to care, don’t know where to look to care,” Jones said.
But she said she got the information she needed to intervene too late. Jones managed to find a summer program for her daughter last year but realized a few weeks in that she wasn’t learning much. She has pleaded with the school, “Help me help you all to help my child.”
Kane’s research shows that kids made up about one-third of their pandemic math losses and one-quarter of their reading losses in the past school year. That was “a remarkable achievement” given that it required learning at a faster pace than normal, he said.
But even if students have continued that pace this school year, they still won’t have recovered all their learning when summer comes. Schools’ unprecedented infusion of COVID-19 relief funding – which supported massive interventions including summer school and tutoring – expires this fall.
“We’ve got to get as many students as possible signed up for summer learning, and that means making sure parents are aware their kids are behind grade level,” Kane said. “Somehow, somewhere, the message is not getting through.”
Who’s to blame for the communication gap?
Few, if any, teachers intend to set up students for failure or mislead families.
The communication mismatch partly stems from the public’s fatigue over pandemic learning loss. Even when they hear about the dire circumstances schools have faced since COVID-19, many parents are inclined to believe the narrative doesn’t apply to their kids.
“They see stories about how achievement has gone down and (think), ‘It must be those other guys,’ ” Hanushek said. Separate research has shown parents often give the nation’s K-12 system mediocre or bad grades but assign high marks to their children’s schools.
Beyond that, experts say, systemlevel challenges are at play: Educators are expected to track, compile and analyze overwhelming amounts of data, often using a patchwork of systems.
“This is not about a failure of teachers,” said Stern of SchoolStatus. “We’re talking about a failure of systems, about teachers being so overburdened and so overwhelmed and systems being so inefficient that nobody can keep up.”
Whatever the causes, Hanushek says, families need a wake-up call – and facing this urgent gap would benefit the nation’s economy. One of his studies found that recent achievement declines among students in the COVID-19 generation could result in them earning 6% less in their lifetimes than other Americans.
“The schools are saying, ‘Well, we’re working to get back to where we were, but things are coming along,’ ” Hanushek said. Such a sanguine approach, he said, often means students don’t get the opportunity to catch up. And if they don’t, “They’re going to be saddled with these losses forever.”
Anna Spoerre
When Morgan Johnson walked into her annual well woman’s exam at the Little Rock Planned Parenthood in 2018, the Arkansas clinic had just gotten a call from the governor’s office.
A new state law that had been working its way through the courts had just gone into effect — Planned Parenthood could no longer receive Medicaid reimbursements. That meant Johnson, then a student, single mom to twin girls and patient on the federal insurance program for those living in poverty, had to find a new provider.
“I felt devalued as a person who didn’t have insurance,” she said, recalling thinking, “Wow, Arkansas really hates women. This isn’t about abortion.”
She said it took her months to get into a new provider who took her Medicaid because wait lists were so long.
A few years earlier, Johnson said Planned Parenthood had been her lifeline after she had an ovarian cyst rupture while she was uninsured. She said the clinic signed her up for Medicaid and got her into regular appointments, which ultimately kept her from leaving school, her initial plan once the debilitating pain began.
“They were my doctor when I did not have one. If not for that, I probably would’ve dropped out,” Johnson said. “Who knows where I would be without them.”
Arkansas’ law was upheld by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. Since then, Missouri has tried twice to enact a similar restriction through the state budget, both times ending with the state Supreme Court ruling the effort unconstitutional.
Now, Missouri Republicans are trying again to replicate Arkansas, this time by changing state law. Proponents of Missouri’s legislation argue that no public funding should be going to clinics affiliated with abortion providers in other states.
Planned Parenthood clinics in Missouri no longer offer the procedure, which has been nearly completely banned in the state since 2022. Their affiliates in Kansas and Illinois do.
Despite the legal victories, Planned Parenthood clinics have not received any Medicaid reimbursements since 2022. Emily Wales, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which oversees clinics in western Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, said her organization has been privately fundraising to offset the cost of care to continue seeing Missouri Medicaid patients.
But she’s not sure how sustainable that is.
Asked if they would have to stop seeing Medicaid patients immediately if this legislation became law, Wales said they’re still evaluating their legal options and whether they might apply for federal funds.
“The real issue for us is that the public safety net for low-resourced patients in Missouri is already so strained that when you start using a very small number of resources and try to expand care, it’s just not possible,” Wales said. “It’s hard to imagine that there won’t be people who are affected — maybe not immediately — both in a matter of months where we’re just not able to cover the cost of care for everyone who needs us.”
Those who support the bills, including anti-abortion advocates, have said that it’s immoral for any public funds to go to groups that promote abortion. Historically, state leaders have agreed, prohibiting state money from paying for abortions even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Supporters of the proposed Missouri law argue the nearly one in five Planned Parenthood patients on Medicaid can simply find a new provider. Those opposed say that’s not so simple.
Fundraising to keep patients in the door
The House has already passed a bill, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Cody Smith of Carthage, that would make it illegal for any public funds, including Medicaid reimbursements, to go to abortion facilities or their affiliates, including Planned Parenthood.
Smith’s bill was also approved by a Senate committee, putting it potentially one step away from the governor’s desk.
An identical Senate version, sponsored by GOP state Sens. Mary Elizabeth Coleman and Nick Schroer, ran into a Democratic filibuster earlier this year. At a January hearing, Schroer said other health care providers could “pick up the slack” if the law passed.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the Planned Parenthood clinics in Missouri have only provided services such as contraceptives, STI testing, cancer screenings and wellness checks. Missouri’s Medicaid program, called MO HealthNet, serves low-income and disabled citizens, and has long banned funding for abortion, with limited exceptions.
For the past two years, the Missouri Family Health Council Inc has informally surveyed the capacity at the state’s safety net clinics, calling to inquire about wait times for new patients.
The organization found wait times for new patients at the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics averaged between the same day and three days to get an appointment. Across the other safety net clinics, wait times averaged between five and seven weeks, with some clinics as few as two weeks and some pausing new patients completely.
In 2022, across all 68 safety net clinics in the state that take Title X funding, around 24% of the clients were on Medicaid, said Michelle Trupiano, the council’s executive director. She previously testified that Planned Parenthood is the primary family planning services provider for about 20,000 patients across the state.
“Excluding one of the most qualified well known and high volume family planning providers from participating in Medicaid and other programs would have a devastating impact on all safety net providers and patients,” she said. “Safety nets are already stretched too thin, and this would just put a giant hole in the safety nets and at the end of the day, leave clients with a huge gap in access to care.”
Neither Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which oversees clinics in Columbia and Kansas City, nor Planned Parenthood St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri have received Medicaid reimbursements for the past two years. This is despite winning in court last month, when, for the second time in four years, the state’s highest court rebuked lawmakers’s efforts to ban abortion providers and their affiliates from receiving Medicaid reimbursements through a line in the 2022 state budget.
Medicaid reimbursements are extremely low and contribute to challenges recruiting, Wales said, and retaining providers across safety net clinics. But every dollar makes a difference.
“We have to fundraise to keep the doors open,” she said. “So when you take out any of the resources, even if they’re really small, it absolutely will make it harder for us to provide care.”
Richard Muniz, interim president & CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said such a law would impact their side of the state, too.
“Let’s be clear — Missouri’s safety net cannot keep up without Planned Parenthood health centers, which provide high-quality health care to thousands of patients a year,” he said. “These attacks on care come at a huge cost to our patients’ well-being and the ramifications are felt by all Missourians across the state.”
The Independent reached out to several safety net providers to inquire about their current wait times for new patients. None offered comments.
Access to care beyond abortion
Maggie Olivia, with Abortion Action Missouri, has been among several Missourians who’ve shown up to Jefferson City to testify against the bills in recent months.
Olivia used Planned Parenthood as a provider for a decade beginning in high school, continuing after college when she was on Medicaid. She still utilizes Planned Parenthood clinics today even after getting private insurance.
“Being a survivor of sexual violence at a young age makes accessing that kind of intimate care like gynecological care all the more difficult and uncomfortable,” Olivia said. “Planned Parenthood centers are the only place I can consistently rely on to treat me in a respectful and trauma informed way.”
She said in the years when Planned
Parenthood wasn’t an option based on her location, she delayed care because she couldn’t go to the provider she already trusted.
Tara Mancini, director of public policy at Power to Decide, a nonprofit that advocates for access to contraceptives, said bills such as these can also harm access to family planning.
Birth control is a journey, she said, and patients should have a plethora of options.
“It’s not enough just to have the pill or condoms or whatnot because that may not work for everybody and their lifestyle and their body,” Mancini said, adding that health centers aren’t required to have a wide range of contraceptives on hand, while Planned Parenthood often offers more options.
She pointed to research out of Texas that found after the state eliminated Planned Parenthood from the state’s Healthy Texas Women program a decade ago, the use of birth control declined significantly.
According to data compiled by Power to Decide, more than 373,000 Missouri women live in contraceptive deserts, which they define as a place where there’s not reasonable access to a full range of contraceptive methods. Nearly 62,000 Missouri women live in counties that don’t have any health centers that provide a full range of contraceptive methods.
She said bills cutting off Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood would only further decrease access to contraceptives.
Providers and wait times
Kate Wagner, a family nurse practitioner with the Jefferson County Health Department, a safety net provider, recently saw a patient who came in for birth control.
The patient had a history of sexual trauma and was nervous to do a full exam. Wagner told her they could reschedule her cancer screening for a day she felt more comfortable, then she filled her birth control prescription and talked her through how a pap smear works.
Wagner promised that she wouldn’t bother to shave her legs, so the patient shouldn’t feel like she needed to, either. She said in private practice, she might not have been able to afford spending so much time with the patient.
That personal connection and the ability to spend more time with patients than she might get at a private practice is why she’s stayed.
“My hair may have changed colors in the last 15 years, I may have a few more wrinkles, but I’m the same girl. I have the same corny jokes,” Wagner said. “My patients know me; they know what they’re gonna get.”
She’s a veteran at the health department’s family planning and STI clinic where she splits time between locations in Arnold and Hillsboro, both on the outskirts of St. Louis County. She sees about 25 patients a week, mostly for family planning. If she has to call in sick, the clinic is canceled for the day.
“There are definitely not enough providers to go around,” Wagner said.
Getting a new patient on Medicaid into their door can require “a triangulation of logistics,” she said. While there’s always a physician who can see them, the more pressing question is how soon.
Comfort and continuity is so important, especially for patients who are uninsured and more likely to have a history of trauma, Wagner said.
To limit or close a safety net provider anywhere in Missouri would be “devastating,” she argued, akin to closing a bridge that will have broader impacts on the whole infrastructure, not just those who travel across it.
Johnson, the Arkansas woman who found herself in need of a new provider, is now back with Planned Parenthood on her private insurance.
In the years since the Arkansas law went into effect, she earned two degrees, became a geologist and turned 40.
She also took up activism, driving to a few events to tell her story and speak on behalf of Planned Parenthood before the pandemic put her advocacy on pause.
Despite taking a step back from that volunteer work a few years ago, Johnson still thinks about the women across her state who were left scrambling like herself. She hopes they’re OK.
“It’s an utter shame,” she said. “There’s no telling how many women in Arkansas have fallen through the cracks.”
This story was first published at www.missouriindependent.com.