School Lockdowns and Learning Loss

Consider this post a follow-up or an add-on to yesterday’s post about the emotional cost of pandemic school lockdowns. Today, we examine learning loss--how badly damaged schoolchildren have been by the same policies.

Of course, we have been following this problem from the onset. And we have joined those who warned that school lockdowns were a very bad idea, indeed.

Now, we have a study performed by Harvard University’s Thomas Kane and others. Kane’s conclusion-- the learning loss was worse than had been imagined, and that it was especially bad for minority children. As for holding the teachers’ unions and Democratic politicians accountable, we have not quite reached that point. Kane obscures the responsibility issue:

Starting in the spring of 2020, school boards and superintendents across the country faced a dreadful choice: Keep classrooms open and risk more COVID-19 deaths, or close schools and sacrifice children’s learning. In the name of safety, many districts shut down for long periods. But researchers are now learning that the closures came at a stiff price—a large decline in children’s achievement overall and a historic widening in achievement gaps by race and economic status.

The achievement loss is far greater than most educators and parents seem to realize. The only question now is whether state and local governments will recognize the magnitude of the educational damage and make students whole. Adults are free to disagree about whether school closures were justified or a mistake. But either way, children should not be stuck with the bill for a public-health measure taken on everyone’s behalf.

By the numbers:

One-fifth of American students, by our calculations, were enrolled in districts that remained remote for the majority of the 2020–21 school year. For these students, the effects were severe. 

Growth in student achievement slowed to the point that, even in low-poverty schools, students in fall 2021 had fallen well behind what pre-pandemic patterns would have predicted; in effect, students at low-poverty schools that stayed remote had lost the equivalent of 13 weeks of in-person instruction. At high-poverty schools that stayed remote, students lost the equivalent of 22 weeks. Racial gaps widened too: In the districts that stayed remote for most of last year, the outcome was as if Black and Hispanic students had lost four to five more weeks of instruction than white students had.

So, Kane, who is an expert in these matters, was shocked to see the extent of the learning loss. And he is largely pessimistic about anyone’s ability to institute programs that will recover the loss. For the record, this blog has been equally pessimistic:

Like any other parent who witnessed their child dozing in front of a Zoom screen last year, I was not surprised that learning slowed. However, as a researcher, I did find the size of the losses startling—all the more so because I know that very few remedial interventions have ever been shown to produce benefits equivalent to 22 weeks of additional in-person instruction.

We will make the best of the situation as we find it. One way is extensive tutoring:

High-dosage tutoring—which educators define as involving a trained tutor working with one to four students at a time, three times a week for a whole year—is one of the few interventions with a demonstrated benefit that comes close, producing an average gain equivalent to 19 weeks of instruction. One of those leading the charge on tutoring is Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, who is offering matching funds to encourage school districts to launch tutoring initiatives. Tennessee’s goal is to provide high-dosage tutors to 50,000 students a year for the next two years. School systems elsewhere have similar ambitions. The educational-policy think tank FutureEd, at Georgetown University, reviewed the pandemic-recovery plans of thousands of districts and found that a quarter had tutoring initiatives in the works.

Other possible remedies will run afoul of-- you guessed it-- the teachers’ unions. They would require extra work for teachers-- good luck with that:

Many district leaders I know are considering three additional measures. One option is voluntary summer school, which, according to prior research, has yielded about five weeks of instructional gain per student. Another option is an extra period each day of instruction in core subjects. A double dose of math over the course of an entire school year has been shown to produce gains equivalent to about 10 weeks of in-person instruction, although the evidence on reading is weaker. (Our team will be working with districts to measure the efficacy of these and other catch-up efforts over the next two years.)

Like tutoring, double-dose math will be hard to scale up. Staffing the additional sections of math requires hiring more math teachers amid a historically hot labor market. Unlike tutors (who can be contractors), districts are hesitant to add permanent teaching staff for a short-term catch-up effort.

How about summer school? It will not nearly be enough:

Meanwhile, summer school has historically struggled with low student attendance. In a typical pre-pandemic year, only about 6 percent of students attended summer school. Even if districts managed to triple that number, enrollment would still fall far short of the magnitude required to eliminate learning loss.

Or else, we could extend the school year:

A third alternative would be lengthening the school year for the next two years. Of course, districts would have to pay teachers, janitors, and bus drivers more, perhaps at time and a half, to work the extra weeks. But unlike with tutoring or double-dose math, districts already have the personnel, the buildings, the buses, the schedules. As long as educators, parents, and students view the extra instructional time as just an extension of the school year—like days added to make up for snow closures—the power of family and school routine will deliver higher attendance than summer school.

Yet, the teachers’ unions would never agree:

The primary problem with a longer school year is political, not logistical. After opposition from the local teachers’ union and some parents, the Los Angeles Unified School District was able to add only four optional days of school next year. This is, to be sure, more make-up time than many other school systems have planned, but quite inadequate given that the nation’s second-largest school district was remote for three-quarters of 2020–21.

Kane suggests that it’s all a challenge, but he is none too optimistic:

High-dosage tutoring may produce the equivalent of 19 weeks of instruction for students who receive it, but is a district prepared to offer it to everyone? Alternatively, suppose that a school offers double-dose math for every single student and somehow convinces them to attend summer school, too. That, educational research suggests, would help students make up a total of 15 weeks of lost instruction. Even if every single student in a high-poverty school received both interventions, they would still face a seven-week gap.

So, that’s the best information we have on the topic. It is not looking very good, at all.