Addressing Concerns about Pandemic Related Learning Loss
By: Libby Bonesteel
There has been considerable media attention over the past year about the concept of “learning loss” in our kids. Learning loss is a phrase that has frustrated educators, myself included, since it came into the common vernacular. Pandemic - kids - learning loss is the media’s through line.
The pandemic is a reality that happened to literally every person in the world. It was a ridiculously complex situation that we all were forced to deal with in a variety of personal and professional ways, many of them painful. Our students were not immune to this. Our kids are different now than they might have been had they not been through the pandemic. Adults are too. Experiences, particularly extreme ones like living through a pandemic, shape the very essence of who we are.
I know there are some in our community who would like more discussion of learning loss for the kids at MRPS, including to what degree it occurred. Many standard measures of progress, like SBAC, were warped by the peculiarities of the pandemic, making them unreliable. But more to the point, I believe it is not how we should be framing our thoughts around our important role in educating children moving forward. At MRPS, what is most important is that we can focus on knowing exactly what each child currently needs and ensuring we have the skills and systems to move them to where they need to be.
The job of educators before the pandemic was quite similar to what it is now and, at the same time, we need to recognize shifts.
Do we need to really look at our systems and see where we have evidence of positive impact and where we don't?
Of course we do.
Might those systems need to change because of the students we have in front of us now? Absolutely.
Has the pandemic put a spotlight on the places our staff need to build capacity?
Yes, 100%.
Has the pandemic affected individual kids more so than others?
I’m positive it has.
We had students prior to the pandemic who were not reaching proficiency. We have students now who are not reaching proficiency. The number of students in this bucket is very similar pre-pandemic and now. We are not seeing a significant drop in graduation levels or kids not going to college. Our screener data in literacy and math show statistically similar results to the same assessment pre-pandemic. Our more targeted diagnostic data in literacy and math tell us that there are some specific areas where groups of kids have gaps. This year we have a rise in HHB/Title IX investigations. We see an increase in requests for special education evaluations, particularly in the early middle school grades. We see an increase in behaviors that are having us re-think how we support behaviors overall. Student stamina is a concern.
We also see resilience, determination, confidence, strong friendships, and outstanding athletic, artistic, theatrical, and intellectual performances by our kids.
Could this all be the result of the pandemic? Maybe. Is that the most important question? These fabulous MRPS kids are our kids. They were our responsibility before the pandemic and they are ours now. We will learn and grow with them, just as we were trying to do before COVID entered our lives. Our job is to ensure every MRPS child has any choice available to them when they graduate. We're going to focus on doing that.
Here are some things we are doing to improve our ability to provide each learner what they need:
- Provide targeted and intensive professional development for our staff based on the needs of our students and teachers. We will continue to do this as we hopefully stay in this more stable environment.
- Increasing the number of interventionists - teachers who work specifically with kids needing extra support in literacy, math, and social emotional learning.
- Either creating time or making better use of existing time meant for intervening on skills specific kids are struggling with.
- Relying far more now than we did before the pandemic on data to tell us where kids are at and what they need.
- Ensuring our teachers use prioritized standards with matching proficiency scales as their guideposts.
- Focusing on building relationships between students and teachers, and students and each other. A safe and welcoming educational environment is imperative to successful learning.
I believe, as a community, we have to spend our limited time together asking the right questions. The questions I am constantly asking are not ones of loss, but instead are focused on growth.
- How are we proactively teaching kids how to be a member of a positive community?
- How are we effectively and efficiently intervening and remediating when a child doesn't "get it" after first instruction?
- How are our teachers collaborating to move forward in both our collective capacity as educators and in every individual student?
- How are we creating short term, achievable goals with kids so that they can master them and gain the confidence to take on the next goal?
- What knowledge do our teachers need to teach and engage the kids we have today?
- How are our teachers actively and intentionally planning and carrying out instruction that enables high levels of learning for every single child?
- How are we creating environments of belonging for every child?
- How are we designing professional learning so teachers have the skills they need?
- How are we creating an environment where resilient, innovative, collaborative people want to come teach at MRPS?
These questions and many others, are the ones we are asking. They are the ones that will drive us towards the future, that will spark innovation and curiosity in both our students and staff, and that will help us move on together.
