The Catastrophe of Learning Loss

The only surprise in this New York Times editorial is that it took so long. Readers of my blog have been informed of the learning loss calamity that was unfolding across America. Like it or not, school shutdowns had been a catastrophic failure. 

Reporting it in real time was certainly better than awaiting the editorial board of the New York Times.

But, better late than never. And surely the Times is correct to emphasize that the error was colossal. And yet, the paper does not place blame where it belongs, with the hysterical public health officials and with the teachers’ unions.

The Times does not sugarcoat the problem:

The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education. It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades and widened the achievement gap that separates poor and wealthy children.

The consequences will roll through the nation, through the economy, like a pestilence:

Economists are predicting that this generation, with such a significant educational gap, will experience diminished lifetime earnings and become a significant drag on the economy. But education administrators and elected officials who should be mobilizing the country against this threat are not.

An important note, the people who created the problem are not running out to find ways to solve it. And that includes elected officials and administrators.

For reasons the Times does not really address, the fallout of the shutdowns has been-- an epidemic of absenteeism:

The challenges have been compounded by an epidemic of absenteeism, as students who grew accustomed to missing school during the pandemic continue to do so after the resumption of in-person classes. Millions of young people have joined the ranks of the chronically absent — those who miss 10 percent or more of the days in the school year — and for whom absenteeism will translate into gaps in learning.

And also,

In the early grades, these missing children are at greater risk of never mastering the comprehension skills that make education possible. The more absences these students accumulate, the more they miss out on the process of socialization through which young people learn to live and work with others. The more they lag academically, the more likely they are to drop out.

However, in some states, like California and New Mexico, “the rate of chronic absenteeism was still double what it was before the pandemic.” The solutions are not simple. There is extensive evidence that punitive measures don’t work, so educators may need a combination of incentives and measures to address the economic and family issues that can keep children away from school.

Of course, the Times might have mentioned the increase in homeschooling, to say nothing of the recourse to private schools. It might have pointed out the malignant effect of woke education, the systematic failure to teach basic educational skills, replacing it with leftist dogma. 

Moreover, in a point that the Times ignores, filling classrooms with migrant children who do not speak English, who cannot read, write or count, and who disrupt the education of the many certainly contributes.

If you are not learning anything, why go to school? The Times hints at the problem:

This sense of disconnection stems from a feeling among high school students in particular that no one at school cares about them and that the courses they study bear no relationship to the challenges they face in the real world.

We have not just made children stupid. We have caused them to be depressed:

Based on survey data collected in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this year that more than 40 percent of high school students had persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness; 22 percent had seriously considered suicide; 10 percent reported that they had attempted suicide.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, many parents and educators have been raising the alarm about the effects of grief, isolation and other disruptions on the mental health of their children. In addition to reconnecting these young people to school, states and localities need to create a more supportive school environment and provide the counseling services these students need to succeed.

As for the solution, the Times recommends more tutoring:

The State of Virginia took a big swing at the problem of learning loss when it announced what is being described as a statewide tutoring program. But high-impact tutoring is labor intensive and depends on high-quality instruction. It is most likely to succeed when sessions are held at least three times a week — during school hours — with well-trained, well-managed tutors working with four or fewer students at a time. Such an effort would require a massive recruitment effort, at a time when many schools are still struggling to find enough teachers.

Tutoring overcomes the disruption of classes filled with children who can neither read nor count.

After failing to place blame on the teachers’ unions, the Times concludes that we need better paid teachers. Obviously, they did not want to rankle important Democratic Party funders.

A study of data from 16 states by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University shows that the most effective way to reverse learning loss is to increase the pace at which students learn. One way is by exposing them to teachers who have had an extraordinary impact on their students. The center proposes offering these excellent teachers extra compensation in exchange for taking extra students into their classes. Highly trained, dedicated teachers have long been known to be the most reliable path to better educational outcomes, but finding them at any scale has always been difficult. If creative solutions can be found, it will help reverse learning gaps from the pandemic and improve American education overall.

Good thing for the Times to notice the problem. Now we need to find a way to fix it. Start by banning teachers’ unions, and finish by firing most of our education bureaucrats.

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