Study of online classes outlines gaps in learning

The closure of most California public school campuses since March has been widely acknowledged to have hurt student learning, but a study this week brings that into sharper focus, finding significant loss in both language arts and math, and more in lower grades and disadvantaged kids.

The study, which compared assessment scores in 18 California districts from fall 2020 and 2019 with advancement seen in earlier years, found that learning among poor children in fourth grade was 7% slower while other fourth-graders learned 5% faster, for an overall gap of 12%. They found similar gaps through eighth grade.

“Those students that are lowincome are learning substantially less than students who are not low-income,” said Heather J. Hough, executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education, an independent research center based at Stanford University, and a study co-author. “It’s widening that gap. That’s what we’re concerned about.”

The study found that in many cases, particularly with middle school and high school grades, students appeared to have improved their learning pace over prior years.

But Hough cautioned that they need to do more research to determine what’s behind that. The study said that improvement could reflect students’ increasing comfort with technol

ogy, changes in administering the test remotely to students at home last fall, the fact that fewer students were assessed than in prior years or even student cheating.

The study comes amid growing tension over reopening public school campuses, most of which in California have been closed since mid-March, as evidence mounts that students are falling behind in onlineonly “distance learning” while open schools have been able to avoid spreading the virus.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlighted a study Tuesday of K—12 schools in five rural Wisconsin districts that found just 191 coronavirus cases among 5,530 students and staff members, only seven of which were linked to in-school transmission, all of them involving students.

“Despite widespread community transmission, COVID-19 incidence in schools conducting in-person instruction was 37% lower than that in the surrounding community,” the study said.

But although Gov. Gavin Newsom released a $2 billion plan last month aimed at spurring campus reopenings, districts and California’s politically potent teacher unions have called it inadequate.

This week’s study by PACE, which also is led by faculty directors at the University of Southern California and University of California campuses in Berkeley, Los Angeles and Davis, was based on STAR and MAP assessment scores in grades 4 through 10 at 18 California districts serving 180,000 students.

Those districts were part of the CORE Data Collaborative, whose schools compare performance metrics and have been conducting the assessments through the pandemic. Hough said only one of the participating districts, Santa Ana Unified, agreed to be identified. Administrators with that district were not immediately available Tuesday.

But what was consistently reflected in the test results across all schools, and concerning to the researchers, was significantly slower learning among younger students and particularly among those who were economically disadvantaged or learning English. A more complete analysis will be done in coming weeks, but the researchers announced their preliminary findings because of the current debate over reopening campuses.

“We wanted to get this out now, even though it’s preliminary, so we could get some of the early analysis into the conversation,” Hough said.