More Ohio students are being homeschooled now than during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of Ohio students being homeschooled was trending upward pre-pandemic, spiked to about 51,500 students during the COVID-19 pandemic and dipped back down slightly.

But homeschooling recently saw another surge with about 53,000 homeschooled students during the 2023-24 school year, according to data from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.

The number of homeschooled students in Ohio, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce:

• 2023-24: 53,051 students
• 2022-23: 47,468 students
• 2021-22: 47,491 students
• 2020-21: 51,502 students
• 2019-20: 33,328 students
• 2018-19: 32,887 students
• 2017-18: 30,923 students

There were about 3.1 million homeschooled students nationwide in 2021-22 鈥� quite the jump from 2.5 million in spring 2019, according to the.

鈥淗omeschooling was already on a slightly slower upward trajectory, and had been for a number of years,鈥� said Douglas J. Pietersma, research associate at National Home Education Research Institute. 鈥淲hat COVID did, from our perspective, is just infused it.鈥�

He expects the number of homeschooled students to keep growing.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not going to put public schools out of business or anything like that, but it鈥檚 going to be a slow growth that is certainly going to be measurable over time,鈥� Pietersma said.

Remote learning during the pandemic made parents become more aware of what was being taught in schools, said Melanie Elsey, Christian Home Educators of Ohio鈥檚 legislative liaison.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think that it was a mass exodus from the public or private schools into homeschooling, but for parents who felt like they could accomplish more with one-on-one attention to learning 鈥� You can tailor the education to meet the needs of their children,鈥� she said.

Not everyone who switched to homeschooling stayed after the pandemic, Elsey said.

鈥淪ome of them put their children back in because it was too much of a commitment,鈥� she said. 鈥淪o I think it was sort of a time period that parents felt comfortable trying something different to see if they could help their children learn more.鈥�

The modern home education movement sprung out of the 1970s and 鈥渟kyrocketed鈥� in the 1980s, Pietersma said.

鈥淧eople were either upset with the quality of education in general,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hen another group of people, it was more about the content of education.鈥�

Today there are many reasons why a family might opt for homeschooling.

鈥淥bviously, the quality of education is still one of the big issues,鈥� Pietersma said. 鈥淪afety issues are a huge thing. People who have had their children in schools where they鈥檝e been bullied or assaulted or had exposure to drugs 鈥� given the size of school, it may be not impossible to prevent some of those things.鈥�

The reason for homeschooling varies and it is not always because a family is not satisfied with their local school district, Elsey said.

She homeschooled her children, but did not originally think it was for her family. However, she changed her mind after she enjoyed being home with her children through their preschool years.

鈥淲e prayed about it and really felt like it was something that was worthwhile,鈥� Elsey said.

Jeannine Ramer has homeschooled her four children 鈥� two are now in college and two (ages 17 and 13) are currently being homeschooled.

鈥淗omeschooling has really strengthened our family relationships, my kids are very, very close and supportive of one another, and I think that鈥檚 all of the hours spent at home and just really learning together,鈥� said Ramer, who lives in Alliance.

They were not initially planning on homeschooling their children, but Ramer鈥檚 sister-in-law homeschooled her children and encouraged them to think about it as their oldest approached preschool age.

They decided to try it for a year or two, but found it worked well for their family.

鈥淲e loved it,鈥� Ramer said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e had the ability to tailor each child鈥檚 education to that child.鈥�

A parent does not need to be a licensed teacher in order to homeschool their children, Elsey said.

鈥淚t鈥檚 amazing how well families do because they have access to resources, really, all over the world, when you can get curriculum from anywhere that meets the needs of your students to learn to pursue their interests,鈥� she said.

Families who decide to homeschool their children enjoy the flexibility, Pietersma said.

鈥淭hey can tailor the education that they鈥檙e providing to their child in so many ways that an institutional school can鈥檛 just because of sheer numbers,鈥� he said. 鈥淥ne teacher in a classroom with 30 students can鈥檛 take the lesson plan and tailor it to each of the 30 students.鈥�

Ramer鈥檚 oldest child was interested in printing and design work as a teenager, so they were able to craft his high school education to those areas. Now he is studying industrial and innovative design in college.

鈥淚t just allowed us the ability to foster that,鈥� she said. 鈥淭here was much more flexibility.鈥�

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

Five years after the start of the pandemic, young Indiana students have made great leaps in their reading skills, but the state鈥檚 middle school students are floundering and sinking.

State tests taken this spring have touched off celebrations of progress with third graders, whose reading proficiency rates had their biggest jump in 12 years, mostly through a state program to train and coach more teachers in the science of reading.

But sagging English scores on state ILEARN tests for middle school students 鈥� scores that match results in other states and the decline in 8th grade reading scores from 2022 to 2024 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress 鈥� have Indiana education officials searching for a way to help older students so their struggles don鈥檛 persist into high school and affect their lives. 

鈥淭he third, fourth, fifth grade (scores) are moving,鈥� state education secretary Katie Jenner told the state school board this summer. 鈥淲here we’re seeing the major lag in data are our late middle schoolers, seventh and eighth grade.鈥�

These students, who were in second and third grade when the pandemic hit in spring 2020 鈥� grades in which students learn key reading skills like sounding out and 鈥渄ecoding鈥� what words mean 鈥� simply haven鈥檛 caught up from schools being closed and most classes forced online for a year. Those grades had a big drop in reading scores from the pandemic and have only fallen further behind since.

The pandemic knocked down the state鈥檚 7th grade English proficiency rate from just under 50% in 2019 to just over 41% in 2021, for example. The decline has continued, with just under 38% of 7th graders scoring as proficient in English this spring.

鈥淲e have to remember, these are our students who intermittently came to school during the pandemic,鈥� said state board member Pat Mapes. 鈥淲e have still not caught up the skill set that they’ve lost during that time. This is kind of just what we’re going to see for a while, until we can get their skills developed.鈥�

The answers won’t be easy. The state has a tight budget, so it may need to seek grants from donors who have already invested heavily in reading for young students. And while there are theories about why older students are having trouble 鈥� including the pandemic blocking them from learning to decode and understand words 鈥� experts nationally say there are no great examples of schools or states that have helped these students catch up to use as models.

States such as Florida and Virginia are trying to help struggling middle schoolers by creating individualized reading plans, said Casey Taylor, senior policy director of early literacy for ExcelInEd, the education advocacy organization founded by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. She also praised Alabama for piloting more coaching in reading for middle school teachers, but said the efforts haven鈥檛 produced enough data to trumpet them as solutions.

鈥淭hose are a few of the examples that we’re looking at, but we don’t have a model to point to as a successful approach in full yet,鈥� Taylor said.

Indiana鈥檚 education secretary Jenner, though, still pledges to offer a plan soon to help these students, using what limited evidence she can find.

鈥淭here’s not a state we can copy and paste, who has figured it out,鈥� she told the state board, while promising, 鈥淥ur eye鈥檚 on that ball. Stay tuned.鈥�

Reading scores in Indiana have been controversial for several years, after they started declining in 2015. Improving reading skills has been a major focus of state officials who required schools to shift to using science of reading strategies in 2023. 

The state鈥檚 Republican supermajority reinstated in 2024 a requirement to have third graders with poor reading scores repeat third grade that Democrats removed in 2017.

The state also started requiring more second graders to take IREAD exams 鈥� the state鈥檚 reading-only tests for young students 鈥� instead of just in third grade, to give early warning of struggles.

The Lilly Endowment, the charitable foundation created by the founders of the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company, gave the state $60 million in 2022 to help schools shift to the science of reading for kindergarten through second grade, donations that are still paying for ongoing work.

The Lilly donations and tax dollars are paying for one effort that Jenner and others are crediting for a jump in third grade IREAD scores this year 鈥� the Literacy Cadre program that launched in 2022 to help teachers learn and then improve their skills with science of reading.聽

Marian University and the University of Indianapolis have staffers that help schools with reading strategies and train school staff to then train teachers. The cadre started with 41 schools in 2022 and has grown to 564 today.

All the efforts combined boosted reading proficiency among third graders from 82.5% in 2024 to 87.3% in 2025, a jump the state school board said was the largest since IREAD started in 2013.聽

Schools in the cadre saw a seven percentage point jump in reading proficiency from 2024 to 2025, nearly twice the 3.6-point increase for non-Cadre schools.

School districts that have received help from the cadre credit the guidance with helping them focus on ways to improve.

鈥淭hey basically trained us,鈥� said India Williams, a reading coach with the Evansville Vanderburgh school district. 鈥淭hey came and trained myself and the principals, then we went and trained the teachers, and the teachers worked with the students, and the students learned. 鈥�

But the cadre and Lilly鈥檚 donations were all focused on young readers 鈥� students who mostly started school after the pandemic 鈥� not students who had lost time in class when they would typically master reading skills.

Several national experts say many students never learned to 鈥渄ecode鈥� words 鈥� to use phonics to figure out what a written word sounds like 鈥� a skill that science of reading lessons focus on. They refer to a 鈥渄ecoding threshold鈥� in which students can make sense of words easily enough that their brains can focus on learning from what they read instead of just deciphering the words.

It鈥檚 what some call a shift from learning to read to reading to learn.

鈥淚f a student is unable to decode longer, more complicated text, all of their attention will be devoted to decoding text, and they won鈥檛 be able to comprehend what they鈥檙e trying to read,鈥� researcher Rebecca Sutherland said when releasing a study on the issue last fall. 鈥淭he findings give us a clearer understanding of what supports many older students need to read on grade-level.鈥�

If that鈥檚 the issue in Indiana or elsewhere, there鈥檚 no quick fix.

鈥淎s persuasive as the decoding threshold thesis might be, the wish for a magic wand to wave at curriculum and standards hints at a serious problem: There is no immediate or obvious solution at hand to address the issue,鈥� Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote for 社区黑料 in March.

Middle school teachers don鈥檛 always know how to teach skills like decoding, since they are often more focused on teaching higher level reading skills like comprehension and interpreting literature, Pondiscio and others noted.

ExcelInEd鈥檚 Taylor said bringing some strategies being used for young readers to middle schools could help.

鈥淔or most kids, more time and repetition is really what they need, but they need that from equipped educators who are trained in how to identify, how to plan instruction and intervention to fill those gaps,鈥� Taylor said. 鈥淲e need to carry some of those supports that are present in early literacy policy into secondary or into the middle grades.鈥�

It鈥檚 why states, including Indiana, are having teachers at all levels train in the science of reading. 

More support for middle school teachers might be needed, however, said Robert Behning, chairman of the Indiana House education committee. 

Behning, who also helps lead Marian University鈥檚 Center for Vibrant Schools, one of the two organizations helping to train and coach teachers as part of the Literacy Cadre, is working on a reduced version of the Cadre efforts 鈥� a 鈥淐adre light鈥� 鈥� aimed at middle schools, where students typically have different teachers for each subject, rather than a single teacher.聽

He cautioned that the state may not have the money for a major effort for middle schoolers, on top of its early grades work. It already had to trim money for schools to buy science of reading materials from the last state budget.

Behning said there may be ways that money Lilly has already committed to literacy efforts, plus another $86 million Lilly is already offering in grants to schools in and around Indianapolis, that can include work with the middle grades.

Whether Lilly would pay for more middle school help is unclear. The organization’s officials say they are encouraged by progress in the younger grades so far, but would not commit to offering more money.

Jenner, however, told the state board last month that she is seeking money to help middle schoolers, as it has younger students.

鈥淲e believe wholeheartedly that we’ve solved multiple other challenges and that we are up for the challenge there,鈥� she said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the Lilly Endowment’s name.

Their teacher engaged them in a call and response: 鈥淵ou can poke it!鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou can?鈥�

鈥淧oke it!鈥� they responded in unison before she added, 鈥渁nd take a little bit of dirt out!鈥�

Down the hall, in a kindergarten classroom, kids spent the morning working on math problems before moving into a purposeful play session focused on fossils.

鈥淚鈥檓 working on three plus three equals six 鈥� using blocks!鈥� exclaimed one student, Gabriella, who shared that her favorite parts of the day are 鈥渟nack and recess and lunch.鈥�

Later that afternoon, she and her classmates headed to one of a number of extracurricular activities ranging from martial arts to step dance and soccer.

These students at New Bridges Elementary, a school which sits along a stretch of the Eastern Parkway in the heart of Brooklyn鈥檚 Crown Heights neighborhood, were participating in a partnership between New York City Public Schools and the Department of Youth and Community Development. The program, launched in 2021 in the depths of the pandemic, gives students access to free academic and enrichment programming over the course of six summer weeks 鈥� a time when schools have historically been shuttered to all students except those in need of the most concentrated, remedial academic support.

New York City is one of scores of districts across the nation who have worked to transform traditional summer school into a more inclusive, enrichment-filled yet still academically rigorous space. 

Some of these districts began this shift over a decade ago, following the release of a which put forth a case for rebuilding summer learning and highlighted the ways in which this time could be used to fight some of the academic backslide typically seen between June and September, especially for students from low-income backgrounds. 

These efforts were supercharged during the pandemic, when schools were faced with a learning loss crisis and, simultaneously, a seismic funding influx from the $189.5 billion Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, also known as ESSER.

The pandemic, 鈥渞eally lit a fire in everybody to say, 鈥榃e can’t do things the same,鈥欌�� said Nancy Gannon, senior advisor of Teaching and Learning for U.S. Education at , a nonprofit which built the to help districts and states rethink what can be accomplished during these down months.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think people really dug into the potential of summer until these last couple years,鈥� she added. 鈥淎nd now that they see how potent it can be. I don’t know that there’ll be any going back.鈥�

But some districts and states are scrambling to hold onto this new vision of summer with ESSER money sunsetting, the recent freeze 鈥� then release 鈥�  of the federal dollars that keep many of these programs afloat and a greater uncertainty about the very future of the U.S. Department of Education and all its funding streams.

‘It can be a joyful place’

Kevyn Bowles, the principal of New Bridges Elementary, said he鈥檚 witnessed the transformation of summer first hand over the course of his 12 years running the school.

Historically, you were 鈥渂ringing together the students who had done the most poorly over the course of the school year in eight different schools, and putting them all in a class together,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o even if you were bringing your most joyful teaching self to it, it still just was a challenging situation.鈥�

Kids didn鈥檛 want to be there, he added, and it showed. That changed with the introduction of Summer Rising in 2021. 

鈥淓ven from that first summer, it felt more like an opportunity for students,鈥� Bowles said, 鈥渧ersus something that we were forcing just a small number of kids [to do] because they had quote, unquote, failed. 鈥� We had enormous demand鈥�

This summer, around 250 elementary school students have signed up to attend Summer Rising at Bowles鈥� school, and fewer than 30 of them are mandated to be there. 

Each morning, the kids gather in the auditorium at 8 a.m. for Bright Start, a five-minute morning meeting filled with songs, affirmations and high fives. 

鈥淭o me that just sets the tone,鈥� said Bowles, 鈥渓ike we’re here together. We’re in this together. It can be a joyful place. It can be a fun day.鈥�

Kids next head to a half-hour block of social-emotional learning through yoga and mindfulness, followed by three-and-a-half hours of concentrated academics, taught by licensed teachers. After lunch and recess, students have their afternoon 鈥渟pecials鈥� 鈥� including soccer, martial arts, theater and dance 鈥� which wrap up by 6 p.m. each evening.

Bowles said the vast range of enrichment activities they鈥檙e uniquely able to offer students over the summer bring a lot of happiness and motivation to the school building. And while attendance in July and August remains a challenge, New Bridges Elementary has seen positive results in math and reading, especially for the youngest students: Kindergarteners through second graders who attended Summer Rising in past years either maintained their skills or grew, whereas their peers who didn鈥檛, slid slightly backwards.

鈥淪ummer learning arguably has the greatest impact at the lowest price on the greatest number of students of any policy solutions,鈥� Chris Smith, executive director of , told 社区黑料. 鈥淎nd it鈥檚 time that we invest in it in a serious way with public funding.鈥�

鈥楢 blank canvas鈥�

For summer learning to be an effective tool to combat learning loss 鈥� rather than merely functioning as child care or summer camp 鈥� school leaders need to strategically implement research-backed best practices, experts and researchers told 社区黑料.

From 2011-16 a group of RAND researchers , free and district-led summer learning programs for low-income elementary students in five urban school districts: Boston, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Duval County, Florida and Rochester, New York.

They found it was important to pair strong teachers with rigorous academic curriculum and high-quality enrichment experiences. Other recommendations include:

• Programs should run for five to six weeks with three to four hours a day of concentrated academics, including 90 or more minutes of math and 120 or more minutes of English Language Arts.

• Small class sizes, capped at 15 students per adult

• A clear attendance policy and incentives for showing up

• Recruitment and hiring of the district鈥檚 most highly effective teachers

• Curriculum anchored in school-year standards and student needs

• Early planning led by a program director who dedicates at least half of their time to this work, beginning in January

After two consecutive summers, students who attended one of these programs for 20 or more days outperformed their peers in math and ELA and displayed stronger social-emotional competencies, the Rand researchers found.

The pandemic provided a perfect opportunity for districts across the country to implement some of these practices, both because students had a heightened need of academic and social-emotional support and because of the unprecedented sum of federal rescue funds that were poured into schools. One-fifth was allocated to with 1% specifically earmarked for summer learning.

Because the money was distributed through states 鈥� rather than districts 鈥� this also invited them into the conversation, when historically summer programming had been locally driven by schools or other organizations. And this unique moment provided fertile ground for more research, according to Allison Crean Davis, the chief research officer at , who also directed a three-part funded by the Wallace Foundation.

鈥淣ever had we seen this natural experiment where it’s like, 鈥榃e’re going to give 1% of these large funds to states to then tee up summer learning 鈥� all across the country [and] give some of that money to districts to actually do it,鈥欌�� she said. 鈥淪o it just felt like it would be a real missed opportunity not to say, 鈥榃hat does this end up looking like? How do states respond?鈥欌��

She and her team found that 94% of the local education agencies they studied offered some kind of summer programming in 2021. Of those that did, all implemented academic programming, 59% were traditional 鈥渃redit recovery鈥� programs aimed at students who had failed and 57% supplemented academic programs with social-emotional learning.

RAND also expanded on its earlier during the pandemic and found that 81% of schools nationwide offered summer programs in 2023, yet districts鈥� largest summer programs typically enrolled less than half of eligible students and less than 1 in 5 of the largest elementary programs met the minimum recommended hours of academic instruction. 

Despite some of these ongoing trials and errors, summer remains an exciting space for innovation and collaboration, said Julie Fitz, a researcher at the .

鈥淪ummer is just an interesting space where you have a little bit of a blank canvas, and states were getting really creative with thinking about how to design that space,鈥� she said.

It also became an area of rare bipartisanship, she added. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just been so refreshing to see people coming together around kids and putting the needs of kids and families first.鈥�

鈥楲ittle shy about investing in summer right now鈥�

This is the first summer since the pandemic that most states are navigating summer school without COVID relief funds 鈥� and with increased uncertainty about federal education spending more broadly.

While the hope initially was that districts and states would find ways to sustain programming after that fiscal cliff, many remain concerned that even basic “foundational funding” needed to educate students might disappear, Davis said.

鈥淚t wouldn鈥檛 surprise me if people are a little shy about investing in summer right now,鈥� she said.

This tension became especially apparent on June 30, when the Trump administration announced it would withhold almost $7 billion in previously allocated money, including $1.3 billion for the , which districts rely on to run afterschool and summer programming. The news came one day before schools were meant to receive the money.

鈥淭his type of uncertainty 鈥� where they thought they were going to have it, and then all of the sudden we’re told the day before they expected to be given it, to no longer have it 鈥� is unprecedented,鈥� said Tara Thomas, government affairs manager at

The move disproportionately harmed smaller districts and those serving larger populations of students from low-income families, 鈥渂ecause they didn’t have money to float these services while they wait to figure out if the federal government is going to give them the money that they were promised,鈥� Thomas said.

Following widespread, bipartisan pushback, the Office of Management and Budget said on July 18 that the $1.3 billion for afterschool and summer programs, although filed by two dozen states after the sudden freeze alleged critical academic and extracurricular programs had already been “irreparably harmed.”

Despite these hurdles, researchers and district leaders remain excited about where summer learning is headed.

鈥淚 think it鈥檚 really encouraging and there鈥檚 a lot of vision about how summer can be an important tool in the state toolbox in terms of improving educational outcomes and other social focus areas,鈥� said the Learning Policy Institute鈥檚 Fitz. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 really an optimistic area right now.鈥�

Fortunately, federal funding structures include a little-used tool for sustaining student support programs. , which provides billions in funding for schools serving low-income students, includes allowing states to set aside up to 3 percent of their allocations for direct student services, including and other high-impact interventions. This funding could be a lifeline to the all-too-recently defunded programs making the on the most . 

This provision requires no new funding yet remains largely untapped. Policymakers and education leaders have long pointed to the 3% state set-aside in Title I as a way to sustain critical interventions, but few states have taken full advantage of it. Instead, they simply add it to the money they share with districts.

But with pandemic-era funds largely depleted and budgets tightening, this overlooked mechanism offers a rare opportunity: preserving the programs that have made the greatest impact without forcing districts into painful trade-offs.

For now, Title I appears to be a stable source of federal funding, with regular increases each year. Even when the Trump administration moved to halt federal funding last month, Title I stayed online. Since 1980, allocations to districts have grown by an average of 4.2% a year. This steady rise creates a practical opportunity: A state could allocate its full 3 percent set-aside for direct student services while still increasing district funding, at least in nominal dollars.

For example, if all states had reserved the complete 3% entitled in 2023, they would have had $552 million to continue supporting direct student services and still raised allocations to districts by $639 million. And 2023 allocations weren鈥檛 an anomaly. As Figure 1 shows, growth exceeds 3% in most years, with 24 of the past 43 years surpassing this mark and 11 others showing growth below 3%.

However, even looking at the worst years for Title I growth, it is still feasible to build toward the 3% allocation over a series of years. A state could gradually build up to that level, taking 1% initially and then additional shares in two subsequent years. The transition would be helped by the fact that a districts’ Title I allocations fluctuate from year to year reflecting changes in the U.S. Census Bureau estimates of the number of eligible children in each district.

Ohio is already leveraging the set-aside allocation with its grant. The program directs funding toward high-dosage tutoring, advanced coursework, career pathways, personalized learning, and academic acceleration, aligning with local improvement plans to improve student outcomes. 

Districts have leveraged this grant funding to introduce Advanced Placement and College Credit Plus courses, expanding access to high-level curriculum that were previously out of reach. At the same time, the grant has helped establish career pathways that expose students鈥攕ome as early as middle school鈥攖o high-demand industries, giving them a head start on college and career readiness. 

These investments not only accelerate learning but also work to close long-standing opportunity gaps, illustrating the potential of targeted Title I set-aside spending to drive meaningful change.

Beyond successful state examples, the Council of Chief State School Officers has published a addressing the logistics of implementing the set-aside allocations. The guide also details how, with proper planning and careful communication, states can use this money as a powerful lever for filling gaps in critical supports, like intensive tutoring and wraparound services. Done right, this is more than just financial maneuvering; it鈥檚 a blueprint for how federal education policy can be both ambitious and effective.

The expiration of the $190 billion in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding marks a natural transition, but it need not mean the end of direct student services, such as tutoring programs, that have proven valuable to mitigating pandemic-era learning loss. 

By leveraging year-over-year increases in Title I funding, states can establish a sustainable mechanism to continue these services without reducing district budgets. This approach balances our commitment to students with our responsibility to districts, ensuring that we move forward in a way that is both effective and equitable.

The end of ESSER doesn鈥檛 have to mean the end of targeted academic support. But making the most of existing resources requires political will. The question is whether states will act before students fall even further behind.

One student stacks up the counters instead, while another watches and giggles.

鈥淐an someone tell me what expression we just made?鈥� asks Yvette Munguia, the math tutor leading the lesson. 鈥淲hat is two times four?鈥�

鈥淓ight,鈥� murmurs one student.

鈥淧lus three?鈥� she asks.

Silence.

With Munguia鈥檚 patient coaching, the students 鈥� who scored several grades below the 5th-grade level in math 鈥� work their way through the exercise. As they work together on the order of operations, they take long pauses to puzzle over basic addition and subtraction.

Munguia is one of more than 20 math tutors working in Oakland Unified Schools this year. Called math 鈥淟iberators,鈥� tutors like Munguia were recruited and trained as part of a partnership between the school district and the nonprofit Oakland REACH. The parent-led math tutoring model follows the success of the Oakland REACH鈥檚 Literacy Liberator program, which produced , according to a 2023 report.   

The math Liberator program is a direct response to parent demand. In 2021, Oakland REACH surveyed district families about what they wanted and needed for their children. More than 80% asked for math tutoring. 

Both REACH and OUSD wanted to follow up with a very specific type of tutoring. They sought to engage parents and other guardians in learning more about how the district teaches math and how they can employ that approach at home with their children. 

During two evening workshops, parents were encouraged to confront their own insecurities about math. Math educators talked about the importance of building confidence in mathematical ability, particularly for students of color. Oakland REACH shared data, including the fact that  students of color in Oakland are performing at or above grade level in math this year. Data points like this are important, but they also reinforce the myth that students of color aren鈥檛 good at math, the group was told. To support students, it鈥檚 critical to flip that narrative. The way forward is a 鈥済rowth mindset鈥� 鈥� tutoring with positivity and confidence.

What came next was MathBOOST, a campaign to train and hire math tutors from the community 鈥� no experience necessary. The goal was twofold: support children with high-dosage math tutoring while providing paid opportunities for parents and caregivers.

鈥淚t should be the district鈥檚 responsibility to support students, and why not show families that they鈥檙e already doing this at home and they can do it in a way that pays them money?,鈥� explained OUSD STEM coordinator Edgar Rodriguez-Ramirez. The district depends on volunteers to support teachers in classrooms, he said, but more often than not volunteers are from white, affluent neighborhoods. 

Part of shifting the narrative about student intellectual capacity is to invite family members to be present in the school, Rodriguez-Ramirez said.

鈥淔amilies that have been wanting to volunteer in school have the opportunity to work,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey know how to raise their children. Now they鈥檙e adding value to the community.鈥�

Oakland REACH and district staff trained tutors based on the high-impact tutoring program, which requires weekly small-group support, close monitoring of student progress, alignment with district curriculum and oversight by school staff.

During her tutor training, Mungia and other prospective math tutors met on Tuesday and Thursday nights for five weeks 鈥� with dinners provided 鈥� followed by two more days of professional development. District and REACH staff worked together to train the tutors to use iReady, an online assessment and teaching platform that the district uses to personalize student academic support.  

Now as a tutor at East Oakland Pride, Munguia has access to the same diagnostic student assessments that classroom teachers use and can pull lessons from the district鈥檚 math curriculum to help students catch up. Using that information, she can target where each student in the small groups she meets with need practice and support.

The students seem excited to work with her. Some show up early and have to wait their turn. In addition to her natural patience and ease with math 鈥� not to mention the stickers she hands out on Fridays 鈥� Munguia鈥檚 roots in the neighborhood are an added asset for the job. Having attended OUSD schools herself, Munguia speaks fluent Spanish. She lives close by and her nine-year-old daughter attends another local area public school.

鈥淪he has the trust of the students,鈥� said East Oakland Pride Principal Michelle Grant. 鈥淎nd if you don鈥檛 have that, you don鈥檛 have anything. She鈥檚 good at what she does.鈥�

Munguia previously worked as a caregiver and an instructional assistant at a community college in Oakland. She was looking for another job related to education when she saw an ad for the tutoring program on the job site Indeed. She had never taught math to young children, so her success with students at East Oakland Pride is a testament to REACH鈥檚 training.

鈥淟iberators are proof that our communities are full of assets we can no longer afford to sideline if we want to fix a broken educational system,鈥� said REACH founder and CEO Lakisha Young.

Thalia Ward, 25, graduated from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo three years ago and applied for a tutoring job because she wanted to go into teaching. 

The first step in the training, she said, was called a Fellowship. During their bi-weekly meetings, the tutors in training discussed readings they鈥檇 been given in advance.

鈥淲e worked through the different ways we learned math and how kids are learning math today,鈥� Ward said. They heard from tutors who had started the previous year and also visited a veteran math teacher who was giving a summer school lesson.

鈥淲e saw that when expectations are high, students are more likely to exceed standards. A lot of us are working with students who are behind grade level, but that鈥檚 a sign that we should hold them to expectations. They need more personal time with an adult.鈥�

Recruiting grandparents and caregivers

REACH developed Literacy Liberators in the fall of 2022 to supplement and support instruction during the pandemic, partnering with the school district and literacy nonprofit FluentSeeds to recruit parents, caregivers and community members to deliver tutoring. It鈥檚 a unique model, district leaders say, because it combines high-dosage tutoring with family and community engagement. 

鈥淚 don鈥檛 know of another model where you鈥檙e recruiting grandparents and caregivers, giving them a job, uplifting them to show the leadership skills to improve instruction,鈥� said Rodriguez-Ramirez. 鈥淭his model reclaims what it means to have a community school.鈥� 

Tutors work from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day that school is open, he said, and earn between $16.33 and $19.17 an hour, with benefits.

Like Literacy Liberator model tutors, Math Liberators are encouraged to use their personal experiences with school in their work. Whether they found school difficult or relatively easy, personal experiences, one study found.

鈥淚t鈥檚 been a while since I was in elementary [school] myself,鈥� said Munguia, who is 30. 鈥淚 remember feeling shy, not wanting to speak up. I鈥檓 seeing the shy students and I can relate.鈥�

While literacy tutors focus on students in kindergarten through third grade, math tutors work with third through fifth graders. Small groups 鈥� no bigger than four students 鈥� are still the model, but the math tutoring has a bigger emphasis on a 鈥済rowth mindset,鈥� since so many students, regardless of academic performance, don鈥檛 think they鈥檙e good at math.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 all have to be 鈥榤ath people鈥� to help our kids,鈥� Rodgriguez-Ramirez said. 鈥淲e wanted to address that math can be hard, but it鈥檚 because we didn鈥檛 learn it the same way.鈥� 

During the parent workshops, families worked through the math problems that their children were learning so they would recognize their children鈥檚 homework. Helping children with math, Rodriguez-Ramirez said, doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean knowing the answers. It might mean figuring the problems out together.

鈥淲e want the kids to hear the same message at home,鈥� he said. 鈥淟et鈥檚 talk about math without leaving it in the school.鈥�

The program started in four schools, but this year it has expanded to 11 sites, with plans to grow further 鈥� not just in the number of tutors, but in their professional development as well. Tutors will receive continuous coaching, Rodrigues-Ramirez said, in pedagogy, including how to differentiate instruction for varying skill levels within a group.

REACH will also begin a virtual math tutoring pilot program in January, offering online tutoring to Black and Hispanic families in Oakland and Rochester, New York.

When school first started in September, Munguia helped classroom teachers during math instruction and got to know the students, said David Braden, instructional math lead at East Oakland Pride.

鈥淪he got to see the expectations for math, which are very high, and these kids have scored several grade levels below,鈥� he said. And she鈥檒l be getting deeper training in how to work with kids at different levels. 鈥淭he trick is calibrating the instruction to align with what diagnostics say.鈥�

Munguia appreciates the opportunity the program has given her. She has two associate鈥檚 degrees from Laney College in Oakland, one in Language Arts and the second in photography. She has no formal teaching experience but said she would love to be a classroom teacher someday.

鈥淚鈥檓 ecstatic working here,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 wish I could help all of the kids, but I can only have four at a time.鈥�

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies provide financial support to The Oakland REACH and 社区黑料.

Scott Schmerelson, who has worked in the LA Unified School District for nearly four decades and has served on the board since 2015, was  by his board colleagues on Dec. 10.  

As board president, he succeeded , who is retiring.

A former LAUSD teacher, principal and administrator, Schmerelson assumed leadership of the board just before he begins his third and final term representing District 3, which covers parts of LA鈥檚 San Fernando Valley region.

In a phone interview, Schmerelson said he鈥檇 focus the board鈥檚 attention on fighting falling student enrollment in the remainder of the academic year, as pre-pandemic declines accelerated into long-term losses that may eventually force school closures.

鈥淚鈥檓 going to constantly, constantly talk about enrollment,鈥� Schmerelson said. 鈥淔or the school district to remain viable, we have to have students.鈥�

Schmerelson said he hoped LAUSD鈥檚 improving test scores would help attract students who may have left the district for private schools or home instruction.

He said as board president he鈥檒l also focus on issues including LAUSD鈥檚  and rising .  

It鈥檚 a tall order. But with nearly 40 years working in the district and close to a decade on the school board, Schmerelson believes he has the backing of his community.

As president, Schmerelson will help set the direction of the board鈥檚 policymaking and manage its operations. The LAUSD鈥檚 seven-member board sets the district鈥檚 policy, controls its budget and hires the superintendent.

This fall Schmerelson overcame an aggressive campaign from opponent Dan Chang, a math teacher at James Madison Middle School in North Hollywood, who focused much of his election messaging on the need to tame waste and corruption in the school district.

Chang and his backers, including the state charter school association鈥檚 political arm, spent more than $5.6 million promoting his campaign. 厂肠丑尘别谤别濒蝉辞苍鈥檚 backers, including the local teacher union, spent about $2.5 million, .

In the end, Chang landed behind Schmerelson with 48% of the vote, while Schmerelson got 52%.

Schmerelson brought up the cost of the race in remarks he made after he was sworn in as president at LAUSD headquarters last month.  

鈥淩eally, it is our whole community that won,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ecause we learned to work together against the power of money. And when I say money, I mean $5 million.鈥�  

The contest between the two men had the potential to tilt the district鈥檚 school board away from a majority of union-backed members, and impact its handling of several   facing LAUSD, including restrictions on charter schools鈥� use of buildings, which Chang said he鈥檇 move to reverse if elected. 

 victory is part of a successful election season for many teachers  in Los Angeles 鈥� and Schmerelson has aligned himself with local unions on policies limiting space and resources for charter schools.

But in an interview Schmerelson said he supports the continued operation of high-quality charter schools in the district.

鈥淚 am going to support those charter schools that are doing an excellent job of educating the kids,鈥� said Schmerelson.

鈥淚 want to make sure that the charter schools that we have, are viable and working well,鈥� he added.

One thing is clear from the stories that populate this year鈥檚 list: Many of America鈥檚 schools are still grappling with the academic struggles that followed the pandemic 鈥� as well as the end of federal relief funds, which expired this fall. Student enrollments have yet to recover and many districts are facing 鈥� or will soon face 鈥� tough decisions about closures.

Meanwhile, some educators are testing innovative ways of teaching math, reading and science, hoping to gain back some of the academic ground lost since the COVID shutdowns. Technology is also playing a pivotal role in this post-pandemic world, with communities weighing the impact of cellphones and artificial intelligence on student learning and mental health.

November鈥檚 election 鈥� which featured debates over school choice, Christianity in public schools and the fate of the Department of Education 鈥� also made headlines here at 社区黑料. And, as calls for cracking down on immigration grew even louder, we dug deep into the hurdles facing immigrant students and schools. 

Here鈥檚 a roundup of our most memorable and impactful stories of the year:

Exclusive: Thousands of Schools at Risk of Closing Due to Enrollment Loss

By Linda Jacobson

Long before districts close schools, enrollment loss takes a toll on staff and families, from combined classes to the loss of afterschool programs. This exclusive analysis by Linda Jacobson, based on Brookings Institution research, found that more than 4,400 schools lost at least one-fifth of their students during the pandemic 鈥� more than double the number during the pre-COVID period. The detailed look shows how the crisis is playing out at the school level and which districts face tough decisions about closures and cuts. 

Unwelcome to America鈥�: Hundreds of U.S. High Schools Wrongfully Refused Entry to Older, Immigrant Student

By Jo Napolitano

社区黑料鈥檚 16-month-long undercover investigation of school enrollment practices for older immigrant students revealed rampant refusals of teens who had a legal right to attend, shutting a door critical to success in America. Senior reporter Jo Napolitano called 630 high schools in every state and D.C. to test whether they would enroll a 19-year-old Venezuelan newcomer who had limited English language skills and whose education was interrupted after ninth grade. 鈥淗ector Guerrero鈥� was turned down more than 300 times, including 204 denials in the 35 states and D.C., where high school attendance goes up to at least age 20. 社区黑料鈥檚 investigation revealed pervasive hostility and suspicion toward these students in a particularly xenophobic era and a deeply arbitrary process determining their access to K-12 education.

Interactive: Which School Districts Do the Best Job of Teaching Kids to Read?

By Chad Aldeman

It’s not news that low-income fourth graders are years behind their higher-income peers in reading. But poverty is not destiny, and some schools and districts hugely outperform expectations. Working with Eamonn Fitzmaurice, 社区黑料鈥檚 art and technology director, contributor Chad Aldeman set out to find districts that are beating the odds and successfully teaching kids to read. From Steubenville City, Ohio, to Worcester County, Maryland, and across the country, click on their interactive map to find the highfliers in your state. 

Whistleblower: L.A. Schools鈥� Chatbot Misused Student Data as Tech Company Crumbled

by Mark Keierleber

In early June, a former top software engineer at ed tech startup, AllHere, warned Los Angeles district officials and others about student data privacy risks associated with the company鈥檚 AI chatbot “Ed.” The LA Unified School District had agreed to pay AllHere $6 million for the chatbot and the spring rollout of Ed was highly publicized, with L.A. schools chief Alberto Carvalho calling the chatbot鈥檚 student knowledge powers 鈥渦nprecedented in American public education.鈥� But, as Mark Keierleber reported, red flags soon began to emerge. The company financially imploded and its founder Joanna Smith-Griffin left the company. In November, federal prosecutors indicted her, accusing of defrauding investors of $10 million.

America’s Most Popular Autism Therapy May Not Work 鈥� and May Cause Serious Harms

by Beth Hawkins

Today, a child鈥檚 new autism diagnosis is frequently followed by a referral to a variation of an intervention called applied behavior analysis, or ABA, and four decades of pressure from parents and advocates has created a sprawling treatment industry. Yet, even as providers and lobbyists jockey to strengthen ABA’s dominance, autistic adults and researchers increasingly say there鈥檚 alarmingly little proof it鈥檚 effective 鈥� and mounting evidence it鈥檚 traumatizing. In an exclusive investigation, Beth Hawkins spoke with families, teachers and scholars about the growing controversy surrounding autism鈥檚 鈥済old standard鈥� treatment. 

A Cautionary AI Tale: Why IBM鈥檚 Dazzling Watson Supercomputer Made a Lousy Tutor

by Greg Toppo

In 2011, IBM’s Watson supercomputer crushed Jeopardy! champions, raising hopes that it could help create a powerful tutoring system that would rival human teachers. But the visionary at the head of the effort watched as the project fizzled, the victim of AI’s inability to hold students鈥� attention. As new educational AI contenders like Khanmigo emerge, what lessons can they learn from the past? 社区黑料鈥檚 Greg Toppo took a look at how IBM鈥檚 failed effort tempers today鈥檚 shiny AI promises.

State-by-State, How Segregation Legally Continues 7 Decades Post Brown v. Board

by Marianna McMurdock

Seventy years after the Supreme Court outlawed separating public school children by race, Marianna McMurdock sought to answer a pivotal question: How are some of the most coveted public schools in the U.S. able to legally exclude all but the most privileged families? Last spring, she spoke with researchers at the nonprofits Available to All and Bellwether, which published a report that examined the troubling laws, loopholes and trends that are undermining the legacy of Brown v. Board in each state. The researchers called for urgent legal reform to offset the impact that one鈥檚 home address has on enrollment, particularly as many districts have started considering closures.

Being 鈥楤ad at Math鈥� Is a Pervasive Concept. Can it Be Banished From Schools?

by Jo Napolitano

Are you bad at math? If you are, it鈥檚 likely that self-fulfilling seed got planted early. Many math education leaders are trying to uproot that thinking, arguing that any student can master the subject with the right accommodations and tutoring. Changing the bad-at-math mindset in U.S. schools, however, will not be easy, others warn. 鈥淲e use math as a means to sort kids by who gets to be at the top and who gets to be at the bottom,鈥� one math equity advocate told Jo Napolitano. 

Hope Rises in Pine Bluff: Saving Schools in America’s Fastest-Shrinking City

by 社区黑料 Staff

Pine Bluff, Arkansas, earned the unwelcome distinction in the 2020 census of being America’s fastest-shrinking city, losing over 12% of its population in one decade. Amid this exodus of families, students and taxpayers, its school district had to navigate school closures, budget pressures and a state takeover. Throughout last winter, members of 社区黑料鈥檚 newsroom embedded in Pine Bluff to report on the region鈥檚 trajectory. Here are some of the powerful stories they came back with: 

Kids, Screen Time & Despair: An Expert in the Economics of Happiness Echoes Psychologists鈥� Warnings About Tech

By Kevin Mahnken

A prominent economist has joined the growing chorus of experts warning against the dangers posed to youth mental health by screens and social media, reported Kevin Mahnken. New papers released by Dartmouth College professor Danny Blanchflower, a leading expert in the burgeoning field of happiness economics, suggest that the huge increase in screen time over the last decade has made the young more likely to despair than the middle-aged. 

Why Is a Grading System Touted as More Accurate, Equitable So Hard to Implement?

By Amanda Geduld

As educators push for more transparency in grading policies post-pandemic, some are turning to standards-based grading. When done correctly, it separates academic mastery from behavior and more accurately reflects what students know. But misunderstandings of the model, a lack of proper training, and a rush to adopt it often leads to messy implementation. Associate professor Laura Link told Amanda Geduld that as schools look to fix learning gaps, 鈥渟tandards-based grading is one that seems like it can be a quickly adopted effort. But it could backfire 鈥� and does backfire 鈥� very easily.鈥�

Texas Seeks to Inject Bible Stories into Elementary School Reading Program

by Linda Jacobson

Last May, a sweeping redesign of Texas鈥� elementary school curriculum that used Bible stories to teach reading was unveiled. At the time, state education Commissioner Mike Morath described the changes as a shift toward a 鈥渃lassical model of education.鈥� But the revisions raised questions about potential religious indoctrination and bias. Nevertheless, in November, the Texas Board of Education approved the new curriculum in a close vote. Linda Jacobson followed the story closely.

The Political War Over the Department of Education Is Only Beginning

By Kevin Mahnken 

Fresh from their November victories, Republicans are already working to help President-elect Donald Trump achieve his promise of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. But research suggests that, while perceptions of the agency are mixed, the public is unlikely to back a sweeping course of elimination. 鈥淪aying you鈥檒l get rid of it reads generically as being anti-education,鈥� one political scientist told Kevin Mahnken. 鈥淭hat strikes me as a very heavy albatross to hang around your neck come the midterms.” 

18 Years, $2 Billion: Inside New Orleans’ Biggest School Recovery Effort in History

By Beth Hawkins

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed 110 New Orleans schools. Displaced families could not return until there were classrooms to welcome their kids, but no one had ever tried to rebuild an entire school system. While many of the buildings were moldering even before the storm, federal funds couldn’t be used to build something better. Some of the schools had landmark status and were of great historical significance. Eighteen years and $2 billion later, Beth Hawkins took a look at seven schools that illustrate how the district accomplished the task.

As Ryan Walters鈥� Right-Wing Star Rose, Critics Say Oklahoma Ed Dept. Fell Apart

By Linda Jacobson

Oklahoma state education chief Republican Ryan Walters has acted as a one-man publicity machine, a performance that鈥檚 earned him venomous foes and ardent fans who follow him with a near-religious fervor. But one casualty of his approach might be a functioning state education bureaucracy. Even Republican lawmakers have grown impatient, calling for a probe into how Walters handles state and federal funds. As Rep. Tammy West, a GOP incumbent running for re-election, told reporter Linda Jacobson, 鈥淩egardless of party, citizens want transparency, accountability and communication.鈥�

AI 鈥楥ompanions鈥� Are Patient, Funny, Upbeat 鈥� and Probably Rewiring Kids Brains

By Greg Toppo

A college student relies on ChatGPT to help him make life decisions, including whether to break up with his girlfriend. Is this a future we feel good about? While AI bots and companions like ChatGPT, Replika and Snapchat鈥檚 MyAI, can offer support, comfort and advice, experts are beginning to warn of potential risks. 社区黑料鈥檚 Greg Toppo talks to researchers and policy experts about what we should be doing to help make them safer.

Indiana Looks to Swiss Experts to Create Thousands of Student Apprenticeships

By Patrick O鈥橠onnell

Indiana officials have turned to experts at the Swiss version of MIT for help in becoming a national career training leader by making apprenticeships available to thousands of high school students across the state. Indiana is the latest state to work with ETH Zurich 鈥� where Albert Einstein once studied 鈥� to develop ways to break down barriers between educators and businesses so that career training can be a large part of a reinvented high school experience, reported Patrick O鈥橠onnell. 

Investigation: Nearly 1,000 Native Children Died in Federal Boarding Schools

By Marianna McMurdock 

Nearly 1,000 Native American children died while forced to attend government-affiliated boarding schools, according to a report published last summer by the Interior Department. The children are buried in 74 unmarked and marked graves, reported Marianna McMurdock, as tribes assess repatriation of remains. Nearly 19,000 children were estimated to be kidnapped, often at gunpoint, and enrolled in the schools with the aim of assimilation. “We [were] never called by our name, we were all called by our numbers,鈥� said one survivor. 

The Nation鈥檚 Biggest Charter School System Is Under Fire in Los Angeles

By Ben Chapman 

The nation鈥檚 largest experiment with charter schools is no longer growing. These days, Los Angeles charter operators say they are just trying to survive. With tough new policies governing co-locations, falling enrollment, and a hostile district school board, charter leaders say they鈥檝e never faced stronger headwinds, reported Ben Chapman. With enrollment plummeting across the district, some charter networks have recently announced closures while others have stopped submitting proposals for new campuses. 鈥淣ow, particularly in L.A., our focus is not on growing,鈥� said Joanna Belcher, chief impact officer for KIPP SoCal. 

Florida Students Seize on Parental Rights to Stop Educators from Hitting Kids

By Mark Keierleber 

Late last year, Florida senior Brooklynn Daniels was called to the principal鈥檚 office and spanked with a wooden paddle 鈥渢hat was thick like a chapter book.鈥� Like in many enclaves that dot the Florida panhandle, Liberty County permits corporal punishment as a form of student discipline. But her flogging, the honors student said, went much further: She alleged sexual assault and filed a police report, reported Mark Keierleber. Daniels joined a student-led movement to change Florida law that has latched onto the GOP-led parental rights movement. 

Interactive: See How Student Achievement Gaps Are Growing in Your State

By Chad Aldeman

In 2012, then-President Barack Obama freed states from the accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind in exchange for reforms related to standards, assessments and teacher evaluations. That relaxing of school and district accountability pressures corresponded with a decline in student performance across the country that is still being felt 鈥� achievement gaps are growing across subjects and all across the country. To illustrate these alarming discrepancies, contributor Chad Aldeman and Eamonn Fitzmaurice, 社区黑料鈥檚 art and technology director, created an interactive tool that enables you to see what’s happening with student performance in your state.

Left Powerless: Non-English鈥揝peaking Parents Denied Vital Translation Services

by Amanda Geduld

Flouting federal laws, K-12 public schools routinely fail to provide qualified interpreters to non-English-speaking families. Parents must instead rely on Google translate, their own kid or a bilingual staff member who isn鈥檛 a trained interpreter for issues as simple as their child鈥檚 absence for a day or as complex and intimidating as a special education meeting or a school disciplinary hearing. The problem is pervasive and vastly underreported, experts told Amanda Geduld. School leaders say they are trying their best, but lack the money and staffing to meet the need. 

Failed West Virginia Microschool Fuels State Probe and Some Soul-Searching

By Linda Jacobson

The West Virginia treasurer鈥檚 investigation into a microschool, funded with education savings accounts, offers a glimpse into an emerging market that has mushroomed since the pandemic. When the program shut down after a few months, parents were left demanding their money back and scrambling to find other arrangements for their children. The example, experts say, shows that it takes more than good intentions to provide a quality education program. As one parent told Linda Jacobson, 鈥淚 should have seen the red flags.鈥�

In the Rush to Covid Recovery, Did We Forget About Our Youngest Learners?

by Lauren Camera

The country鈥檚 youngest elementary school students suffered steep academic setbacks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic 鈥� just like students in older grades. But new research shows that they aren鈥檛 catching back up to pre-pandemic levels in reading and math the way older students are. And when it comes to math, many are falling even further behind. 鈥淲e were shocked when we first saw the data,鈥� Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, told Lauren Camera.

The White House, which has faced criticism for not doing enough for students who fell dramatically behind in math and reading, had something to show for it Thursday. An estimated 323,000 college students, volunteers and school staff signed up 鈥� not only exceeding the administration鈥檚 goal, but hitting it ahead of schedule. 

鈥淭his problem is not getting solved by somebody in Washington D.C. We launched the vision. We sent out money,鈥� Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten said at an event to celebrate the milestone. But those resources, she said, 鈥渉elped to galvanize鈥� volunteers and staff at the local level. 鈥淚鈥檓 proud that we can see the results of this collective effort.鈥�

In the 2023-24 school year, over a quarter of principals reported offering more tutoring, mentoring or other support services than they did the previous year, according to a of over a thousand school leaders released ahead of the event. In all, roughly 24,500 schools added an average of 5.5 additional adults focused on supporting students.

While it鈥檚 too early to determine what effect the extra help had on student performance, over 30% of principals said they were able to employ research-backed, high-dosage tutoring, according to from the Rand Corp. That means trained tutors worked with the same students over time for at least 90 minutes per week.

Demand for tutors has received significant national attention, given students鈥� steep decline in learning. But the White House count also reflects a variety of added positions, including mentors to help re-engage chronically absent students and those who help students navigate college applications. About $20 million in federal relief money, flowing through AmeriCorps, the national service organization, fueled the partnership鈥檚 work. Districts also dipped in to other COVID funding to support the extra positions.

But the initiative, led by the National Partnership for Student Success at Johns Hopkins University, faces an uncertain future. Districts are using up what鈥檚 left of that money, and Republicans want to for AmeriCorps, as they have for years.

鈥淥ne hundred percent depends on the election,鈥� said Robert Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins professor who leads the partnership. He expects the effort to continue 鈥渋n some form鈥� if Vice President Kamala Harris wins. 

It鈥檚 unclear whether Donald Trump would do the same, but the educational effects of the pandemic will linger regardless of who鈥檚 in office, he said. 

鈥淲e have kids that are disengaged. We have kids that have greater out-of-school problems. We have kids that are more confused about what they want to do after high school,鈥� Balfanz said. 鈥淚t’s very hard to address those kids with your school staff alone.鈥� 

Launched six months after U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona issued the charge for more tutors, the initiative serves as a hub for connecting local groups and individuals to schools that need them. Some leaders from the partnership鈥檚 national network of 200 districts have tried new strategies to motivate students.

In hopes of reducing a chronic absenteeism rate of about 30%, Principal Scott Hale at Johnstown High School, north of Albany, New York, tapped existing staff members, like teaching assistants, secretaries and coaches, to serve as mentors.

鈥淪uccess mentors鈥� at the school are matched with students to better understand why they鈥檙e absent and what incentives might lure them back. Keeping track of absences on a simple paper calendar drives home how quickly they can add up, Hale said.

鈥淢any students don’t realize how many days they have missed until they see it,鈥� he said. Reducing schoolwide chronic absenteeism has been tough, he added. But over half of the 125 students with mentors increased their attendance. 鈥淭o see a kid improve from 80 absences to 30 is a huge win for us.鈥�

鈥楳ust be doing the right thing鈥� 

College students, who saw their own educations disrupted by the pandemic, have been integral to school recovery efforts, said Josh Fryday, for California Volunteers. 

鈥淭his generation experienced COVID in high school,鈥� Fryday said. 鈥淚 think they understand how important it is to be connected and have this extra support.鈥�

Devin Blankenship was among those who signed up for the organization鈥檚 College Corps. She was earning a degree in sociology from Vanguard University, south of Los Angeles, and wanted some nonprofit experience. To avoid commuting through Los Angeles traffic, she took a virtual tutoring position with Los Angeles-based Step Up Tutoring. 

Over the next year, she worked with a third grader from the Los Angeles Unified School District whose reading skills had been so severely impacted by school closures that he barely knew letter sounds. Before she could focus on a lesson, another student confided in Blankenship about getting bullied at school.

鈥淪tudents told me they were excited to come to tutoring for that hour,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 said, 鈥榃ow, I must be doing the right thing.鈥� 鈥� 

Blankenship鈥檚 experience also points to some of the challenges tutors have faced, especially in a district as large as Los Angeles. At times, she didn鈥檛 know where to go with questions about helping a student or working with a family. She said she had to initiate Zoom or phone calls with her supervisor for answers. 

There were also moments when she felt ill-equipped to help. She recalls watching YouTube videos on improper fractions late at night while trying to meet a midnight deadline for a college paper.

鈥淚 was like, 鈥楳an, I wish there were tutoring sessions for me,鈥� 鈥� she said.

With interest in a career in education, she sometimes felt frustrated that she didn鈥檛 have more interaction with students鈥� teachers. But those limitations didn鈥檛 drive Blankenship away. She now works as a teaching assistant in a special education class at Palms Elementary School in Perris, California, east of Los Angeles. She鈥檚 part of a program that fast-tracks interns into classroom positions to help address a teaching shortage.

鈥楽olved the problem鈥� 

In addition to giving future teachers practical experience, the national effort has spawned connections between tutoring organizations and college students looking for work. 

Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, struggled while schools were closed to find community service jobs for its students. Then an official who runs its federal work-study program learned about Step Up Tutoring through a local .

Pepperdine was 鈥渞eally interested in partnering with Step Up because we solved the problem for them,鈥� said Sam Olivieri, Step Up鈥檚 CEO. 鈥淲e were able during COVID to fill those community service slots through a virtual program.鈥�

Word of their partnership spread and Step Up Tutoring now draws college students from 17 institutions. Virtual tutoring options have helped universities meet Cardona鈥檚 2023 for higher education leaders to spend 15% of their work-study funds on community service 鈥� more than double the .

Olivieri thinks that the higher commitment from colleges to helping K-12 students will be a 鈥渄urable鈥� impact of the partnership鈥檚 work. 

Rand鈥檚 data shows that despite the additional funding and personnel, a third of principals said only some of the students who needed the services received them.

鈥淭he waters are not receding,鈥� Balfanz said at the event. 鈥淭he challenge remains.鈥�

The findings stand in stark contrast to older elementary-school students, who appeared to show accelerated growth and were making up for lost learning over time, and have prompted concerns over the enduring impact of disrupted foundational years.

鈥淲e were shocked when we first saw the data. The toll that the pandemic took on these young learners is striking, and we need to pay more attention and prioritize them,鈥� says Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates.

鈥淭he data show that these students 鈥� these second-graders who were in preschool or were just toddlers during the pandemic 鈥� their learning was disrupted and now they are having a harder time recovering and, in some cases, are falling even further behind.鈥� 

The Curriculum Associates report focused on how students who entered kindergarten through fourth grade in the fall of 2021 performed in math and reading over three years, and compared those scores against students who started prior to the pandemic. In doing so, researchers analyzed results from roughly 4 million students. The dataset is unique in that it includes younger children who don鈥檛 yet participate in federally-mandated state testing or the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which accounts for why most academic achievement data focuses on older grades. 

While the researchers found that younger students were either falling behind or consistently hovering below pre-pandemic levels in both subjects, they were most challenged by math. Students who were in second and third grade during the 2021-22 school year had bottomed out in their recovery, hovering below pre-pandemic achievement levels. Meanwhile, students who were in kindergarten or first grade at that time had been dropping further below historical trends. 

Even the younger students who were on grade level prior to the pandemic 鈥� a subgroup that generally showed less learning loss and quicker recovery times, including for the younger students in reading 鈥� were lagging significantly behind. And notably, they made less progress compared to their pre-pandemic peers regardless of whether they attended urban, suburban or rural schools. 

The same is not true of older elementary-school students in reading or math. Students who were in fourth grade during the 2021-22 school year, for example, were hitting pre-pandemic levels in reading and approaching them in math three years later in the spring of 2024.

Why younger students may be struggling 

鈥淥ur data don鈥檛 speak to the why,鈥� Huff said. 鈥淏ut they do suggest that somewhere along the way these [younger] students did not pick up the foundational skills, the building blocks for reading and math 鈥� and especially math 鈥� that are crucial for their learning trajectory.鈥�

Though the study was designed to show correlation and not causation, Huff and her team have a handful of working theories.

The pandemic in increasing enrollment in public preschools and kick-started a chronic absenteeism problem that continues today. Given that so many students missed out on pre-K or kindergarten 鈥� or received instruction virtually during those years 鈥� they may have missed a critical window of learning and development. And, research has long shown, less developed foundational skills can lead to the types of learning gaps the researchers found. 

Research also shows that certain moments in a child鈥檚 development are more sensitive to change than others. Children undergo between birth and age five, for example, but it can be . The pandemic was a once-in-a-lifetime disruption. 

鈥淔or student learning, periods during which students build foundational skills 鈥� the skills most needed to advance learning 鈥� may be especially sensitive,鈥� the researchers noted in their published findings. 鈥淭hus, disruptions during foundational skill development could create a compounding effect, making recovery a slow endeavor.鈥�

Alongside that hypothesis is another: that the academic recovery efforts used by districts targeted students who were either further along in elementary school, or in middle and high school, or in grades participating in state exams. If that was the case, younger learners may have received less intervention support.

Of course, that鈥檚 virtually impossible to track given that districts allocated their state and federal pandemic recovery spending based on needs 鈥� staffing, tutoring, summer learning, social-emotional development, etc. 鈥� and not by grade-level. 

鈥楳ath is a whole different story鈥�

Angie Rosen, the director of curriculum and instruction at Little Silver Boro School District in New Jersey, says she knew right away that the small, high-performing school district had a problem when they brought back kindergarten and first grade students in November 2021. 

鈥淩eading is one thing. Parents can read with kids. But math is a whole different story,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 more about understanding number sense, manipulating numbers and understanding why you鈥檙e doing what you鈥檙e doing.鈥�

To blunt the pandemic鈥檚 impact, Rosen organized intense professional development for math instruction for first and second grade teachers. 

鈥淲e knew that parents wouldn鈥檛 teach math like we were teaching math, so that鈥檚 where we started,鈥� she says. 鈥淲e worked hard at it.鈥�

Rosen says the key to getting their students back on track has been to obsess over their benchmark data to figure out where students have stopped making recovery and plug those holes.

鈥淵ou have to look at where the gaps are, look at where it’s not measuring up, and then target it and address it,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou can’t do every grade level and every year in every subject. But I think that鈥檚 our success 鈥� we pay attention to the data and use it.鈥�

To be sure, the Curriculum Associate data is the first of its kind to suggest that the county鈥檚 youngest learners are uniquely stalled out and, in some cases, falling further behind. Some researchers caution that the doomsday finding hasn鈥檛 been replicated by other robust analyses of post-pandemic academic loss and recovery 鈥� though that鈥檚 due to the fact that standardized testing data does not exist for such young students. 

Researchers from Curriculum Associates acknowledge at least some limitations to their methodology and findings, including that despite the large sample size, the data is not nationally representative, they did not use matched samples and did not track the same students pre- and post-pandemic. 

Huff says the data should be a shot across the bow for school districts to invest more recovery resources on their youngest learners.

鈥淲e now know their growth trajectory is very much dependent upon how prepared they were when they come into school,鈥� she says. 鈥淲e want these data to inform helpful, targeted policies and practice. These are data based on millions of students and we know that there are educators, districts and students out there who are bucking the trend.鈥�

Whether Maine students have recovered from pandemic-era learning disruptions is unclear due to the state鈥檚 choice to not make most data before 2020 publicly available.

That鈥檚 according to a new national report by the Center for Reinventing Public Education, that developed a 鈥渞eport card鈥� to gauge how easily accessible every state made data on student achievement, chronic absenteeism and high school graduation.

Maine was one of only three states across the country 鈥� the other two are New Mexico and North Dakota 鈥� that earned zero points out of the 21 possible. That means Maine had no data before 2020 available on any of the seven metrics mentioned in the report, including achievement levels, growth and proficiencies in English Language Arts, mathematics, science and social studies, chronic absenteeism or other attendance indicators, high school graduation rates, and English language learner proficiency, according to the CRPE report.

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The lack of this data conceals crucial information from parents and other stakeholders on how well their school district is doing on key performance indicators, according to Morgan Polikoff, a professor at the University of Southern California鈥檚 Rossier School of Education and an author of the report. While making long-term data available is only one of the numerous ways of measuring transparency in public education, it is an important metric, according to the report and Polikoff.

鈥淧arents 鈥� and other stakeholders may not be aware of the magnitude of this issue when states don鈥檛 make this data available for comparison, given how important covid was in disrupting education,鈥� he said.

COVID-19 had enormous impacts on American education. Nationwide, public school students have not recovered from pandemic-era learning loss, chronic absenteeism continues to be an issue, and the pandemic disrupted high school graduation rates, which .

鈥淏ut those facts are only visible if the data are available,鈥� Polikoff said.

The Maine Department of Education did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Changing state assessments may be part of the problem

The issue of limited data availability is compounded by changing state-level assessments in Maine. The state has changed how it evaluates student performance at least five times in the last 15 years or so.

These testing discrepancies have continued post-pandemic. Testing paused for the 2019-20 school year, and the way Maine students are evaluated has not remained consistent since. The DOE announced a new mechanism in 2021, which was used for two years. The way students are evaluated changed again for spring 2023 testing, according to a note on the DOE website.

That means even with three years of publicly available data, test scores from the spring of 2021 and 2022 can鈥檛 be compared with 2023 to gain a comprehensive understanding of how students are performing.

Other states also have dealt with changing state-level assessments, Polikoff said, but still made data available while presenting the caveat of changing testing models, which Maine could have done for previous years.

鈥淢aine has clearly made the choice to not present any information from pre-2020 and that might be 鈥� because they change their tests and so they don鈥檛 really feel it鈥檚 appropriate,鈥� Polikoff said.

鈥淏ut I would argue that that might be true of the standardized test data, but it鈥檚 definitely not true of some of the other indicators,鈥� he added, pointing to high school graduation rates and chronic absenteeism data.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com. Follow Maine Morning Star on and .

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) released A Nation at Risk (ANAR), which issued a wake-up call, named the state of US education a crisis, and presented thirty recommendations for action. It bears noting that the Commission鈥檚 recommendations were targeted in focus and scope, leaving the prevailing 鈥渙ne best鈥� district-based education model intact. We will never know whether larger-scaled interventions were considered or not. Whatever the genesis, the final recommendations left education policymakers with an organizational checklist, and as the essays in this series have demonstrated, they responded accordingly.

A Nation at Risk + 40 brought together twelve exceptional scholars and thought leaders to review the nation鈥檚 response to the Commission鈥檚 challenge. At the outset of this research collaboration, compiling the record of forty years of school improvement efforts and summarizing the available evidence of their respective impacts on student outcomes appeared straightforward, if even a bit tedious. It turned out to be anything but that.

Each of the twelve essays fulfilled its assignment. In each strand of investigation, the authors documented the evolution of improvement activity and 鈥攚here it exists 鈥� described the degree to which the efforts paid off. On its own, every one of the essays makes an important contribution to our ongoing national conversation about the critical state of the public K鈥�12 education sector. While we make no claim that the scope of inquiry was definitive, the separate reviews cover billions of dollars in major programs and initiatives pursued by districts, states, and philanthropy. Many of these initiatives were incentivized by Congress and span Republican and Democratic presidential administrations. Our authors offer their own recommendations that, if followed, hold promise to improve conditions in the spheres they examined.

The research collaborative delivered an even more valuable asset, as the result is far more than the sum of the parts. Until the essays were gathered into a collection, the aggregate record of attempts to improve the K鈥�12 education system in the United States was uncharted and unrecognized. We know of no other compilation that illuminates the sheer breadth of reform activity.

For the first time, we can compare the impacts across different areas of investment. Beyond this, taking the full collection as a whole augments the strand-specific recommendations with several crosscutting observations to inform future action.

What did we do?

There can be no dispute that, as a nation, we certainly tried hard to fix the problem. Practically speaking, we addressed every node that was mentioned by the Commission and several that weren鈥檛. It is remarkable how doggedly educators, policy leaders, advocates, and funders have augmented policy and practice with interventions. The sheer volume and spread of reform efforts are worth examining, as they begin to shed light on the situation we currently face in public K鈥�12 education.

Other scholars (Hattie 2023) have used evaluations and other research to rank the impact on student performance of various reforms. The impact estimates are drawn from a vast collection of meta analyses, yielding a super-meta-analysis that rank-orders reported results across different interventions. The rankings are widely interpreted as the definitive, adjudicated, and authoritative guide to improving student performance. In statehouses, state education agencies, and school districts, the rankings have taken on mythic proportions in guiding policy decisions about school improvement.

It is easy to see the appeal. The aim is noble, and the appetite is intense. Sadly, deeper inquiry into the rankings shows significant problems with the work: the desire to be expansive sits in tension with the need to apply stringent criteria about which meta-analyses are fed into the rankings. We learned that the underlying quality of the reform interventions themselves and the rigor of the research about their effects varied widely. To illustrate with a hypothetical: in the rankings, one thousand low-quality interventions with medium-strength evidence receive higher weight than one hundred high-quality interventions with a high-quality evaluation.

The concerns go beyond the problem of the quality of evidence. The implication for policymaking and educator practice is that the rankings encourage devotion to one or two marginal adjustments to schooling at the expense of lower-ranked options. The greatest risk lies in overlooking emerging successes for years until the next update to the rankings occurs.

Wishing to avoid a similar result, we chose a different approach to exploring the body of evidence. Beyond the notable volume of reform efforts attempted over the past forty years, it is useful to consider the points of the system that the various reforms were designed to change. This is important because many of the checklist items from ANAR鈥檚 recommendations aim at strengthening only one facet of the K鈥�12 system, and the Commission did not offer recommendations on mixing, matching, or stacking multiple reform efforts.

The stability of the basic model of US K鈥�12 public education over four decades is advantageous for our purposes because it supports a generalized theory of action, sometimes called a 鈥渓ogic model.鈥� Theories of action specify the types of capital, staffing, and other resources that are needed to provide K鈥�12 education. Theories of action also detail the policies and practices that are followed. Inputs and processes combine to produce a near-term result referred to as 鈥渙utputs.鈥� The eventual value of the results is identified as 鈥渙utcomes.鈥� With this lens, we classify the policies, programs, and initiatives discussed by the essay authors in order to learn about the targets and yields of reform activity. To be clear, some improvement efforts span our classification categories (e.g., some professional development includes input and process features); these are assigned by their most prevalent attributes.

Our authors are highly sensitive to the availability and caliber of research and evaluation. In many areas, such as public school choice and inclusion of master teachers in educator preparation programs, no evidence exists. In other areas, impact information is hindered by studies involving few examples, fuzzy specifications, or weak counterfactuals. Evaluative studies of school-based health centers and socio-emotional learning are examples where evidence of impact is lacking. The field of impact studies has evolved in constructive ways, but it still hinges critically on a weak commitment to objective assessment of impacts and the discipline to incorporate the insights into practice.

Inputs

A preponderance of the improvement efforts identified by the authors sought to adjust the inputs used by the education system. These include teacher-focused efforts such as alternative certification and incentive pay arrangements, adding school-based health centers, strengthening early childhood programs, and overhauling curriculum. System-focused input changes seek to expand the variety of inputs or the overall structure of the system, whereas marginal input reforms seek to improve the quality of the selective resources within the existing stock.

Taken together, these efforts aimed to enrich the ingredients in the 鈥渞ecipe鈥� for K鈥�12 education. Focusing reform attention on adjusting the quantity, quality, or intensity of a factor before it is used keeps the reform at arm鈥檚 length from the actual production of education. Think of upgrading tires on a race car 鈥� the improvement to the equipment takes place offline and then is brought online in the hopes of improved performance.

The evidence shows that the range of impacts for inputs-focused reforms run from zero to as much as three-quarters of a year of additional achievement for students. About half the input reforms have negligible or no effect on student academic achievement. The options that show no impact share the attribute of shallow or isolated treatment鈥攁 few hours of professional development or play-based preschool. For both system-focused and marginal input reforms, positive results point to interventions that have significant weight, scale, and duration to create and sustain the momentum for change. As examples, we see this in the small-schools movement (systems focused) and in laser-focused teacher professional development (marginal adjustments).

Input reforms assume that the rest of the system will respond organically to the change in the treated input. As the evidence shows, many efforts provided too little leverage to lift the rest of the operation. Worse, an exclusive input focus ignores the possible interactions with other components that may react in different ways than expected.

Processes

Process reforms aim to change the way education is created, delivered, and monitored by schools and their oversight bodies. To extend the recipe analogy, processes are the mixing and cooking instructions. Marginal process reforms attempt to mix inputs in new ways or interact inputs with new policies or protocols. Systemwide process changes try to ubiquitously reengineer old ways of doing things to produce better results, such as the experience of adopting the IMPACT teacher evaluation and compensation initiative in Washington, DC, or implementing a digital learning platform across all the middle schools in a district.

Given the challenges of designing and implementing new programs, it is little wonder that our authors found fewer process reform examples in their scans. Across the essays, the authors identified three general areas of process reforms.

Teacher professional development falls largely into the process category鈥攕elected areas of knowledge and skills are targeted to expand the capacity of teachers to perform their duties. This differs from input reforms, which are directed toward improving the number or quality of candidates at the point of hiring. The available evidence suggests that for much of the past forty years, there was little or no effect from a large proportion of professional development. Recent evidence, however, shows positive impacts when the programs are strictly focused, multifaceted, and sustained, producing between one and four months of extra achievement.

Incentive programs for higher teacher performance have strong impacts on student academic achievement for their duration, from about two months to an extra year of added achievement. However, these impacts are largely one sided; they did not induce low-performing teachers to move up or move out. Rather, they provided financial and work assignment flexibility incentives for teachers. Similar programs that trade extra compensation for teaching in the most challenging settings also produce strong student gains of similar magnitudes. Both types of reforms are highly vulnerable to political disruption at all points of the program, especially if teachers鈥� participation requires evaluation of their performance.

Technology adoptions can also be classified as process reforms. Once technology has been purchased and distributed, it serves a process function. The evidence of impact from the broad provision of education technologies has, for the most part, been disappointing, showing no impact and substantial stranding of investments. Despite that general trend, however, a number of significant and strongly positive examples of technology-supported education have emerged as promising proof points.

The third area of process reforms occurs at the governance level of the system. Since ANAR鈥檚 release, states have changed the way they fill key positions on their boards of education and within the Council of Chief State School Officers. The change in appointment mechanisms is a process change whose influence is systemwide. Likewise, changes in district school boards to a portfolio management model also flow across the district system. The evidence on these governance changes has been mixed.

It is clear that important differences exist between systemwide process changes and those that are marginal in nature. Some process reforms can work only if introduced systemwide, such as adoption of student safety protocols or school-based disciplinary programs; a 鈥渉alf a loaf鈥� approach won鈥檛 work. Alternatively, marginal process change can be narrow in scope, in terms of either the focus of the reform or the organizational level that is targeted. Pilot programs are a clear example. In marginal process reforms, the rest of the schooling equation remains untouched. The balance between systems and marginal processes can shift either way depending on the interplay of cost, the scope of the planned innovation, friction with adjacent policies or practices, and political resistance.

Moreover, estimating the effects of process changes is technically and practically more difficult than measuring the effects of input shifts. The interactions of new processes with other factors and their dynamic nature over time create complexity that is difficult to measure. The body of evidence is therefore smaller than exists for input-focused changes. New instructional models such as discovery or expeditionary learning are process changes. The evidence on these is thin, except for personalized learning modalities, which show strongly positive effects on learning gains and graduation rates.

Likewise, the expansion of technology 鈥� equipment, connectivity, and content鈥攊n schools is a process change that has altered the way curriculum and instruction are organized and deployed. The impacts are sobering: unused resources cannot advance learning, but where strong implementation occurs, we also see improved student academic achievement.

The final set of process changes can be grouped as 鈥渋nfusion鈥� efforts. Extended school years appear not to improve student results, but additional time in focused instruction helps; the extra time matters only if it is used well. Similarly, teacher and leader professional learning programs are seen as a mixed bag. As with extra time in school, the evidence shows that focused and targeted experience can produce positive impacts on student learning, but those conditions do not appear to be the norm.

Although they have a smaller evidence base, process reforms deal with larger segments of the education enterprise than inputs. Those that work share the attribute of internal design coherence, even if they do not fit well into the rest of the system. Finally, the larger the process reform, the more of a political target it offers to opponents.

Outputs

When we consider the near-term results of elementary and secondary education or the milestones on the way to reach these results, we are discussing outputs. These are the immediate products that reflect the end state that inputs and processes have created. In K鈥�12 education, common outputs include meeting learning benchmarks for grade promotion, satisfying graduation requirements, and implementing performance measures for teachers and leaders. It bears noting that outputs are agnostic to inputs and processes: many combinations are possible to create a particular output.

Systems-oriented improvement efforts have been judged by both outputs and outcomes. In Cami Anderson鈥檚 essay on the results of districtwide reform strategies in Newark, New Jersey (chapter 12), early childhood enrollment increases of 35 percentage points were one output. Another was the rise of 20 points in the percent of Black students enrolled in above-average schools, followed by significant early gains in reading achievement and eventual gains in math. Ironically, the impressive improvements in Newark were not tallied to be a successful outcome, largely because of friction in the community and with elected leaders. Similar efforts under the US Department of Education School Improvement Program did not create positive results.

There are other examples of reforms that aim to change outputs. Redirecting school board activity to prioritize academics and student learning has been shown to produce positive movement on outcome measures for schools and districts.

The largest efforts to move outputs of elementary and secondary schooling lie in the national adoption of accountability programs. The consequential approach to school-based accountability advanced by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) improved learning by one half per year of student achievement and narrowed achievement gaps between groups of students. High school graduation rates increased by 15 percentage points with concomitant increases in college enrollments. These improvement trends persisted through 2015, but they have all but reversed over the past eight years, with student learning falling dramatically over the course of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Other efforts to affect teacher preparation programs also looked at outputs, but to no avail: current teacher certification exams are unable to predict future variations in teachers鈥� performance once they are in the classroom. Other common indicators, such as academic credentials or years of experience (also inputs), are similarly disconnected from future teacher performance.

Finally, some reform activities deliberately circumvent mainstream institutions and channels in an attempt to create better outputs. Extra-system initiatives can take the form of inputs or processes, or they can combine the two. Some options that have shown positive impacts for student results include mayoral control (significant gains in achievement and better fiscal controls) and gubernatorial appointment of state board members (better performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress assessments).

As noted by other scholars, school choice can arise within, across, or outside of school systems (Lake 2020). Intradistrict school choice redistributes seats in schools by changing the way students are assigned to schools; it aims to improve the outputs for the students who access better classrooms. As a process reform, it is associated with stronger achievement in math for minority students. Interdistrict choice is rare, and its effects are not well studied. Charter schools operate in a separate policy stream and deliver stronger growth and achievement in reading and math, especially in urban charter school networks (CREDO 2023). For vouchers, the impact for students on balance has not been positive; the evidence on vouchers shows weaker achievement for enrolled students even as they create positive spillover impacts on public schools. Other efforts that move outside the usual institutional arrangements are less understood. Newer options such as education savings accounts (ESAs) and microschools have yet to be examined in depth.

Outcomes

In an education theory of action, outcomes are the final results of the entire enterprise. Outcomes differ from outputs because they apply external standards and criteria to the nominal outputs to make judgments about what is 鈥済ood enough.鈥� So, while outputs may be expressed as test scores, CTE credentials, or course completions, when we apply evaluation standards such as postsecondary readiness, we are making judgments about the performance that was produced.

Since ANAR was released, we have gained clarity, if not conviction, about what we intend our schools to produce. Performance frameworks that illustrate the results that stakeholders deem desirable have grown in number and complexity. Across the country, charter school authorizers and state and local school boards use performance frameworks as central elements of school and district oversight and accountability. Newer examples of our collective expectations are seen in the work in some states to define the profile of a graduate, setting explicit criteria for what a high school diploma should represent.

By law, every state reports publicly on how its students and schools are performing. State-issued 鈥渞eport cards鈥� for districts and schools generally include demographic information for teachers and students, operational and financial information, and student academic performance information. States set thresholds for student and school performance expectations, though these thresholds vary a lot. Whatever their aspirations, we are not in vastly different territory today than in 1983. Disappointing outcomes (e.g., high school math performance) have even prompted attempts to improve the optics by diluting some of the criteria (such as watering down the instructional frameworks or course requirements), but such maneuvers do nothing to alter the underlying reality.

Insights from the audience

As Walt Kelly鈥檚 cartoon character Pogo said, 鈥淲e have met the enemy and he is us.鈥� Indeed, the staggering array of treatments, interventions, redesigns, and innovations that our authors identified makes it a challenge to rationalize our collective experience into any semblance of order. If we had aimed for chaos at the outset, it is hard to imagine a better result.

Despite the cacophony, the catalog of activity amassed by the authors supports a few observations about our forty-year effort to reform that hold potential for illuminating future directions for elementary and secondary education in our country. After identification, we can characterize the record of reform efforts with six I鈥檚: impulsive, incremental, incoherent, impatient, intransigent, and ineffective, as discussed below.

Impulsive

Most of the reforms were adopted at full scale鈥攁cross an entire state or the nation. Many efforts to push programs across states or regions had roots in advocacy pressure to move reforms quickly. Many state leaders were game to bring new policies to their state if they were perceived as having been successful elsewhere, as it reduced the perception of risk and provided an existing model to copy.

Doing the 鈥渉ere, too鈥� dance hobbled the new adopters in two ways. It skipped over analysis of the 鈥渇it鈥� of the reform in the local context鈥攁nd the important variation in local contexts 鈥� on the receiving end. It is impossible in hindsight to determine how many of the 鈥渕ixed result鈥� outcomes stemmed from differences in the settings on the ground, but it seems safe to say local contours were likely overlooked as most of the programs or policies were advanced. It is also true that jurisdiction-wide adoption curtailed the ability to evaluate implementation and impacts in real time, so valuable learning was lost at the get-go.

Incremental

The most pervasive attribute is the incremental nature of the interventions. This stems in part from the original recommendations of the ANAR Commission, framed as commonsensical and achievable changes. The commitment to incrementalism continued even when earlier efforts proved ineffective. One might argue that it made sense to aim small to soften implementation friction. The record suggests otherwise. Because the interventions were mostly narrowly focused, not only did they lack the scope or initial scale necessary to drive needed system changes, but in their sheer volume鈥攕o many reforms in so many areas鈥攖hey led to a reform fatigue that lasts to this day.

It is important to note that the essays identified examples of successful reform that did not involve incremental adjustments. Systemwide efforts as described for Newark and new systems building as seen with charter schools have larger blueprints and therefore greater areas for change.

Incoherent

A third observation is that most of the changes undertaken over the past decades were launched with no consideration for how the reform would interact with the rest of the K鈥�12 system. Changes to piece parts were designed and adopted as autonomous endeavors. This partially explains why many innovations fail to scale effectively.

This does not mean that things were only tried one at a time. Many examples exist of multiple incremental reforms launched simultaneously without an understanding of the interplay between them or with the rest of the equation. Reforms were 鈥渂olted on,鈥� one after another, without regard for how they fit together. And each one that was added 鈥渄iluted鈥� the impact of the others. The resulting lack of coherence often led to unintended consequences that were never even considered, much less planned for.

One important implication of incoherence is a lost opportunity to ensure that stakeholders 鈥� especially the ground-level personnel鈥攆unction with an understanding of the way the system works and how they belong in it; a well-crafted plan of action can provide that. A second implication is that it is difficult to objectively learn from experience, especially from unsuccessful ventures. When the general model is unorganized, it is hard to assign causality, for example, between lack of implementation fidelity of a sound design and a design that does not fit the context it is meant to improve.

Impatient

A separate issue that permeates the essays is the (often unstated) expectation that improvement efforts produce large demonstrable results almost immediately and without regard to the time requirements of the change being made. Changes to organizational culture need to occur rapidly, but other changes take time. Shifts in instructional methods often require more than a single year to stabilize enough to know how well they work. Incorporating new systems such as new-teacher onboarding can take even longer to reveal their true value and impact.

The expectation of quick results creates multiple harms. It doesn鈥檛 give the good parts time to take root or provide the space to iterate toward success. Moreover, it seeds unrealistic expectations about the diligence needed to give new approaches their due. From a political vantage, it gives the doubters and pouters a head start on declaring new reforms a failure. It also contributes to the 鈥渃arousel,鈥� as one teacher described it: 鈥淚 don鈥檛 have to do anything but wait鈥攊n three years there will be something new.鈥�

Compounding the problem, the governance side of the equation needs strong and enduring leadership to be patient with complicated, multifaceted reform efforts and to plan and invest for the long term. Even if the enabling conditions are understood and a proven scaling strategy is in place鈥攕uch as with charter management organizations鈥攚hen the reform in question needs ten to twenty years to come to fruition, rapid turnover cycles of education leaders lose important institutional knowledge, and politicians are short on patience (or incentive) to see it through.

All too often, the time needed to see results is longer than the amount of time politicians have in their seats, and it does not line up with the cyclical campaign and election cycle. Shortrun wins are coveted by political actors seeking to establish a record of success on which to build advancement. The bias toward quick returns and the lack of political will or appetite to invest in long-run solutions have a serious trickle-down effect: (1) a constant churn of reform that does not give space or time to realize success and (2) systems that learn to wait out the current wave of reforms, as 鈥渢his, too, shall pass.鈥� When the need for improvement is glaring but the actors in legislatures and education agencies prioritize their own short-run interests, we face compound system failure.

Intransigent

The authors carefully identified examples of reforms that produced positive student learning impacts, but many were subject to political interference or failed to perform at scale. Still, the examples show what may be possible. What they do not show is the complementing picture of the myriad reforms that went nowhere and evaporated into history. There is no tally of their number.

But anecdotal reports have consistently told the story of reform churn. Charles Payne鈥檚 phrase, 鈥淪o much reform, so little change,鈥� seems to apply. Instead of forty years of sustained and coherent reform, we have forty short-run reforms that each last three years. School teams are introduced to new practices during the professional development days that accompany the start of school each fall, with short windows of time to prepare for deployment and little implementation support during the year. The school teams learn about impacts indirectly 鈥� and often too late to try modifications. Decisions about continuing or terminating the effort usually do not include input from those on the front line. More often than not, new initiatives are quietly abandoned, with the cycle left to repeat itself the following year.

It is notable that, despite this endless churn of reforms, the prevailing institutional structure of 鈥淪EA, LEA school board, district administration, school leadership, grade/class grouping, teacher鈥� remains largely unchanged, despite repeated pressures on it to adapt. The possibility exists that the summative effect of all the efforts over the years has fostered a resiliency to any improvement efforts鈥攁n adaptive state of resistance to change of its core activities. It may help to explain the tendency to shift focus to other facets of students, teachers, or teaching where ground may be more fertile for positive experience. There is no way to test this idea empirically, but it fits the pattern of the evidence and explains the abundant cynicism and burnout.

Ineffective

The strongest case for learning from our experience lies in our national trends on student performance. Given the authors鈥� reports, it is little wonder that, even before the blow to student learning of COVID-19 school closures, the long-run reports noted that US student performance was stagnant or in decline.

Two considerations help to explain our current state. Part of the problem is that, apart from formal pilots, most reforms launch without considering how to learn from them. We are seriously underresourced across the sector in measuring local conditions and reform effectiveness.

In addition, even after forty years, the system has significant internal inconsistency鈥攊t lacks a 鈥渦nified theory鈥� of how reform should be done. This essay collection recounts how many reforms were launched without a sufficient discussion of which level of the system (e.g., state, district, school) might be the most effective to lead the transformation efforts.

Conclusion

We face an even more daunting challenge today, which is that forty years of reform have exhausted everyone involved. The one thing we may have conclusively proven is that the system, as presently constituted, has been resilient to reforms at scale. A modern ANAR report might not fall on deaf ears鈥攖he need for school reform is real鈥攂ut it would fall on ears that are tired of hearing about it.

What is clear is that we have a thin collection of reforms that have been shown to work and that can scale. None of the proven reforms seek to integrate with other proven reforms to concentrate their success. The larger the scale of innovation/reform, the larger the political target it presents for opponents of change.

What we do have is an impressive record of what not to do. We can鈥檛 assume that ideas that have been proven effective in one setting will be effective in every setting. We can鈥檛 expect change at the margins (no matter how well they are done) to be able to leverage an entire school model. We can鈥檛 impose reforms that ignore how the change affects other parts of the enterprise. We should accept these lessons as a form of learning in itself and perhaps the best final message of this exercise. Drawing on the six I鈥� 鈥攊mpulsive, incremental, incoherent, impatient, intransigent, and ineffective鈥攎ay provide lodestars by which to assess new proposals toward more effective approaches to delivering strong education to our nation鈥檚 students.

See the full Hoover Institution initiative: . 

Bridget Bolder sent her daughter, Mia, to kindergarten at a neighborhood public school. After all, it seemed the 鈥渘ormal, regular thing to do.鈥�

But Bolder started to worry that some of her daughter鈥檚 classmates were exposing her to inappropriate topics. Early in the school year, Mia had to tell a teacher about a boy groping some of the other girls.

鈥淚鈥檓 like, she鈥檚 a baby,鈥� Bolder said. 鈥淏ring her home a little while longer before I throw her to the wolves.鈥�

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Brian Wilson and his wife homeschooled three of their children last year. They struggled to juggle home life, both parents鈥� jobs and teaching the kids.

The family briefly switched to in-person school, but Wilson said it only validated the parents鈥� theory that the individual attention the kids got at home had been working.

鈥淭hey seemed like head and shoulders above all the other kids when it comes to learning,鈥� he said. 鈥淢y son, Aaron 鈥� he鈥檚 the youngest 鈥� he was actually helping kids in his class.鈥�

Both families have turned to the new Brookside Virtual Academy so they could keep their kids at home and still rely on professional teachers to lead their schooling.

The academy is attached to Brookside Charter School and bills itself as Kansas City鈥檚 only virtual program where teaching happens on live, interactive video calls.

Online school isn鈥檛 widely popular. It鈥檚 been blamed for some of the learning loss that set kids back during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kansas City Public Schools closed its virtual academy for kindergarten through fifth grade this year because of shrinking enrollment, district spokesperson Shain Bergan said in an email.

But for a girl with severe social anxiety? A boy with leukemia? A young athlete with a rigorous training and travel schedule?

Leslie Correa, who helped design the KCPS program, said certain students and families need the option. So she found a home for the program at Brookside, where she鈥檚 now the virtual academy principal.

鈥淭he students that virtual works for, it works really well for,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e cannot close the door to them for having a great education.鈥�

Who succeeds in virtual education?

For some students, the computer screen provides a layer of distance that makes them braver, Correa said. Learning from home can also reduce distracting for some kids with autism.

For example, loud or persistent background noise, visually busy environments or other students bumping into them could overwhelm some children.

Other students might need virtual school for logistical reasons.

That could include students who are barred from in-person school for disciplinary issues, traveling athletes, kids going through intensive medical treatment like dialysis or chemotherapy, or parents who struggle with transportation.

Some families identify as homeschoolers but want professional help teaching reading and math, Correa said. Since virtual school is more concise, it leaves more flexibility in the day.

Parents鈥� fears can also push them toward keeping kids at home.

鈥淎nytime that there has been a violent occurrence in one of our schools in Kansas City, I get a big uptick in enrollment,鈥� Correa said. 鈥淭hey feel scared and they鈥檙e looking for an alternative.鈥�

When virtual learning doesn鈥檛 work

To figure out if it鈥檚 a good fit, Correa starts by asking parents why they鈥檙e interested in virtual school.

鈥淚f it鈥檚, you know, 鈥業 don鈥檛 have day care and I need my 12-year-old to be home to watch my kid,鈥� it鈥檚 kind of an alarm,鈥� she said. 鈥淚鈥檓 not the one to judge what their decision is, but I am the one to help arm them with information.鈥�

The virtual academy serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Because Kansas City-area charter schools can only operate within the boundaries of KCPS, its students have to be from that area.

The virtual academy doesn鈥檛 turn students away based on their reason to enroll, Correa said, but it monitors their progress. If a student isn鈥檛 thriving, she meets with a parent to make a plan, like tutoring or switching the child to in-person school.

Schools can deny virtual education if they document that it鈥檚 not in the student鈥檚 best interest.

鈥淢y goal before getting to that point is always to have the parent make that decision for themselves through very hard conversation,鈥� Correa said. 鈥淏ut it does happen.鈥�

Problems can arise when the virtual school doesn鈥檛 think it can fulfill an individualized education program, or IEP, often used to support students with disabilities.

鈥淭he parent has the option to return to in-person learning or waive the IEP, and then their student does not get that support,鈥� Correa said. 鈥淭hey almost never waive the IEP.鈥�

Students can also get removed from virtual school, and referred for truancy, if they stop signing in or engaging at all for too many days.

Correa said she鈥檚 also attentive to offering ways for virtual students to get more comfortable with in-person interaction.

Virtual school students can attend optional in-person events and participate in Brookside clubs and sports.

鈥淚f they want to kind of test the water, the opportunity is there,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f a student is saying to me, 鈥業 am ready to go in a building,鈥� then OK. But then also, if a student is saying to me, 鈥業 need out of the building,鈥� OK, I鈥檓 here. I just don鈥檛 want to disrupt their education.鈥�

How virtual learning works 

Right before the school year started, Brookside Charter School鈥檚 STEAM lab was set up for virtual academy orientation.

Teachers and school leaders passed out laptops, hot spots for internet access and school supplies.

The supply bags include books, basics like pencils and glue, whiteboards and dry erase markers (extra for younger kids, who tend to leave the caps off), and individually packaged science kits for lessons on the solar system, geology or density.

But first, families settled in for a presentation to learn the basics.

Brookside Virtual Academy starts at 9 a.m. with a lesson on leadership.

Most days, students then launch into reading class, followed by math. Wednesdays are for science.

Students spend about two and a half hours in live virtual lessons each day, and another 90 minutes online working through a task list that includes social studies and science.

Live classes use video calls and technology that lets teachers monitor what students are looking at and control their screens.

Parents aren鈥檛 responsible for teaching their kids, but they鈥檙e expected to keep in touch and generally make sure the students are online and on task.

Connecting with families

For some parents, being extra involved in part of the draw.

Wilson, the parent of three kids in the program, said he appreciates that it cuts the school day down to essentials, allowing parents to be more strategic about where they put time into their kids鈥� education.

Bolder, the parent of a first grader, said she鈥檚 looking forward to more easily monitoring what her daughter is learning so she can help supplement that.

Virtual education makes it easier to connect with families, said Tina Duvall, a reading and math interventionist for kindergarten through fourth grade.

鈥淚 get to be in their home with them. It takes away a whole lot of anxiety for kids,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 thought in my years past teaching that I knew 鈥� really, really knew 鈥� my students鈥� families, but not like this.鈥�

Duvall will be working with breakout groups of students, grouped by grade or ability level.

With about 100 students as of Aug. 20, two or three grades are combined under each of four virtual academy teachers. But staggered schedules and help from interventionists like Duvall will allow each grade to learn separately.

The biggest challenge, Duvall said, is not being able to sit by a student to point things out or hand them what they need.

鈥淵ou just want to reach through the screen and help,鈥� she said.

Bolder and Wilson said they have their kids in in-person activities so they can socialize. But they鈥檙e not sure if they鈥檒l ever go to in-person school.

鈥淭here shouldn鈥檛 be such a thing as a bad school,鈥� Wilson said. 鈥淏ut because there is, until we鈥檙e able to put our kids in a good school 鈥� then we feel like we鈥檙e more suited to teach our kids at home.鈥�

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

CORVALLIS 鈥� More than 700 teachers from across Oregon have spent the last two days in classrooms and lecture halls at Oregon State University in Corvallis to tackle post-pandemic learning gaps.

With $7 million in federal COVID relief money, the Oregon Department of Education launched in late 2023 the Equitable Accelerated Learning Project, which culminated in the two-day summit Tuesday and Wednesday. The project goal was to bring teachers from around the state together to address gaps and inequities exacerbated by the pandemic through better instruction.

Among the issues teachers are dealing with are chronic absenteeism; low reading and writing proficiency; middling math skills; and growing achievement gaps among students with disabilities, students from low-income families, rural students and English-language learners. The project aimed to get teachers to research instructional methods that can help close those gaps, said Angelica Cruz, director of literacy at the Oregon Department of Education.

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It also was designed to help teachers learn from one another about how to better instruct struggling students, she said.

She said the gathering focused on ways to invest in teachers and encourage leadership. Those who participated are expected to return to their districts and share takeaways.

The state launched the Equitable Accelerated Learning Project in December, asking teachers to join workgroups to hone in on pervasive education issues exacerbated by pandemic school closures. In all, more than 550 teachers in 89 districts joined 16 work groups to come up with projects and solutions for improving Oregon鈥檚 schools. They also looked at solutions to absenteeism and teacher shortages and improving student mental health and well-being.

In October, the Oregon Education Department will create materials and professional development sessions for teachers statewide, based on the workgroup findings and suggestions.

The money spent on the project is the last of the more than $112 million the state education department received from the nearly $1.6 billion that the U.S. Department of Education sent the state and its 197 school districts between 2020 and 2021. The Oregon Department of Education and the districts have until September to use up all the money.

Proposed solutions

There were no silver bullets proposed at the Oregon State University summit, but teachers discussed methods for math instruction that rely less on formulas and more on questioning and inquiry. They also looked at assessment techniques that ensure all kids are getting the same amount of class time and exposure to content even as they learn at different speeds. Some ideas were as simple as getting parents to read to their kids by ensuring everyone in the family has a library card, or organizing parent nights at schools, where teachers model for parents what good reading instruction looks like.

鈥淪ome of these parents have never been read to as a child. They don鈥檛 own books. They don鈥檛 know what that looks like,鈥� said Elaina Lambert, an English-language development teacher in Medford.

A major focus of the education department鈥檚 Equitable Accelerated Learning Project has been getting Oregon teachers exposed to the state鈥檚 new literacy framework adopted in May 2023.

The 100-page guideline is an attempt to move instructional standards away from reading instructional methods that have been found to be detrimental to kids, such as using pictures or guessing at words based on the first letter or sentence context, and instead preparing teachers to instruct kids to read and write according to proven methods. The science of reading encompasses a large body of cognitive and neuroscience research and evidence that has shown that the human brain does not learn to read or write naturally, but relies on instruction in specific skills. Everyone needs these skills to read, but they learn them at different speeds.

Some suggested year-round school would be a positive development. The common challenge teachers expressed at the conference, and one that has also gotten worse since the pandemic, is a lack of time. At 165 days, Oregon has one of the shortest school years in the country. Teachers expressed a growing desire for year-round school.

鈥淚 feel like we have kids, especially because we have these summers, these long summers, if they don鈥檛 have the automaticity of their letters by the end of kindergarten, they come back in the fall and they鈥檝e forgotten all of their letters,鈥� Alice Williamson, a reading specialist in the Eugene School District, said.

Williamson and others expressed enthusiasm about the work groups they participated in, and especially about statewide investments in teacher reading instruction and literacy. Many are training in how to teach reading with the $90 million from the Early Literacy Success Initiative that was passed by the state Legislature in 2023. The money was meant to fund teacher training, tutors and curriculum rooted in the science of reading.

Several teachers described graduating from their teacher degree programs in Oregon and Washington without having received any training in teaching literacy.

鈥淚 did not know how to teach kids how to read when I went into my first teaching job teaching first grade,鈥� said Beth Brex, who has been teaching for 18 years and currently teaches kindergarten in Eugene. This year she鈥檚 been taking specialized reading training paid for by the district with state literacy funds, and is trying to get other teachers at her school to take it as well.

Closing gaps

Even before the pandemic, many Oregon students and students across the U.S. were struggling with proficiency in core subjects. The pandemic made this worse.

In 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the 鈥渘ation鈥檚 report card,鈥� showed that proficiency in math of American students in fourth, eighth and 12th grade fell for the first time since results were published in 1973. Those results also showed the largest decline in reading proficiency nationwide since 1990.

Oregon鈥檚 results reflected the nationwide trend.

Over the last 25 years, nearly two in five Oregon fourth graders and one in five eighth graders have scored 鈥渂elow basic鈥� on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation鈥檚 report card. That means they struggle to read and understand simple words.

The most recent annual state assessment data, from 2023, shows that the average proficiency in math and reading among most Oregon students remained about 10% below prepandemic levels in 2019, though the gap between 2022 and 2023 outcomes shows declines are beginning to level off.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

When schools closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact was deep and long lasting. In Maryland schools, test scores fell to an all time low, particularly in math.

In 2021, counties received funds to provide high-dosage (intensive) tutoring to students to close gaps caused by school closures. This funding ensured that students consistently engaged in targeted, supplemental instruction at least two to three times per week for 30-45 minutes per session.

In fall 2021, the Reach Together Tutoring Program (RTTP), a partnership program of the George and Betsy Sherman Center at the University of Maryland Baltimore County collaborated with Baltimore City Public Schools to provide high-dosage tutoring that helps students access and master rigorous, grade-level mathematical concepts.

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The partnership was not new. In fact, UMBC staff and students have long worked with educators to not only support professional development and community programming, but also to educate, develop, and place UMBC graduates in teaching positions in Baltimore through the Sherman Scholars Program. Our growing partnership with city schools, ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) funding, and our access to college students, allowed us to scale our previous efforts.

The program supports students in second through eighth grade who are selected based on diagnostic assessment scores. RTTP participants scored in the bottom quartile, which equates to two or more grade levels below where they should be. Tutoring occurs during the school day utilizing the 鈥減ersonalized learning鈥� block, in order to minimize disruption to the core curriculum.

What makes RTTP unique is the hiring of UMBC students as math coaches. Math coaches work with a small group of students two to three times a week during the academic year for approximately 24 weeks. Using an acceleration model, coaches focus on high-leverage foundational skills that align to grade-level content. They receive extensive preservice and ongoing training highlighting cultural competency, mathematical mindsets and student engagement.

Our mission is simple: 鈥淲e will facilitate purposeful math experiences that enhance each student鈥檚 math identity and accelerate their learning trajectory.鈥�

In 2021, we were in four Baltimore City Schools serving 355 students and had 85 UMBC math coaches. Fast forward to today and we just completed our third year of programming in nine Baltimore City schools (Arundel Elementary, Cherry Hill Elementary Middle School, Lakeland Elementary Middle School, Westport Academy, Park Heights Elementary, Dickey Hill Elementary Middle, Fallstaff Elementary Middle School, Bay Brook Elementary Middle and Curtis Bay Elementary) serving 644 students.

Since 2021, UMBC math coaches have completed 45,586 tutoring sessions. This spring we partnered with the city schools to increase capacity and serve more students through the with a focus on grades six-eight. We are looking forward to expanding to 10 schools in school year 2024-25.

Is it working? We partnered with faculty from UMBC鈥檚 Public Policy and Education departments to complete a two-year program evaluation. Results indicate that participants of RTTP made greater progress when looking at test score gains and percentile gains from beginning of year to end of year when compared to non participants. Student survey data indicates that 85% of students felt more confident in math after participation in RTTP, with one eighth grade student from Cherry Hill saying, 鈥淚 could get help, and if I got it wrong, they didn鈥檛 put me down.鈥�

But there鈥檚 more. RTTP has not only supported students in Baltimore City, but has created a lasting impact and shifted career trajectories for UMBC students. Math coaches are undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students from all majors, races, genders, and ethnicities.

We increased from 85 math coaches in school year 2021-22 to over 165 in school year 2023-24, when more that 1,100 UMBC students applied to be a math coach. Candidates from the Sherman Scholars Program participate in RTTP as part of their academic learning experience, giving them a hands-on opportunity to engage with students prior to beginning their teacher internship year.

Over the last three years, we have had several math coaches decide that they wanted to become teachers. They earned a master of arts in teaching and are now teaching in schools where they tutored.

Rehema Mwaisela is one such scholar who, after her first year as a math coach in her junior year at UMBC, said, 鈥淏efore I was math coach in Baltimore City, I thought I wanted to be a mathematician, or just keep with math in grad school, but now I know my place in math is empowering Baltimore City scholars as much as I can with mathematical knowledge.鈥�

She now teaches at Westport Academy. RTTP has created an exciting space where community engaged scholarship and partnership intersect and the impact is complex and far-reaching.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on and .

While older children are showing encouraging signs of academic recovery, younger children are not making that same progress, and are sometimes falling even further behind, especially in math.

points to the pandemic鈥檚 profound and enduring effects on the nation鈥檚 youngest public school children, many of whom were not yet in a formal school setting when COVID hit.

鈥淚t鈥檚 showing that these students 鈥� who were either toddlers or maybe in preschool 鈥� that their learning was disrupted somehow,鈥� said Kristen Huff, the vice president for research and assessment at Curriculum Associates, which provides math and reading tests to millions of students each year and authored the new report. 鈥淚t鈥檚 striking.鈥�

Researchers and other experts have suggested several potential reasons for this trend. One is that the pandemic disrupted early childhood education and made it harder for many kids to learn foundational skills 鈥� gaps that can compound over time. Fewer children enrolled in and , and many young children struggled with remote learning. may also be factors.

It鈥檚 also possible that schools targeted more academic support to older children and teens.

鈥淲e can see it as a call to action to make sure that we, as an educational community, are prioritizing those early grades,鈥� Huff said. Those are critical years when children learn their letters and numbers and start reading and counting. 鈥淭hese are all the basics for being able to move along that learning trajectory for the rest of your schooling career.鈥�

have examined students鈥� academic progress post-pandemic. that students in third to eighth grade are making larger-than-usual gains, but that most kids are still behind their pre-pandemic peers. Meanwhile, academic gaps between students from low-income backgrounds and their more affluent peers have widened.

The new Curriculum Associates report, which analyzed results from some 4 million students, is unique in that it includes data points for younger children who haven鈥檛 yet taken state tests. Researchers looked at how students who entered kindergarten to fourth grade during the 2021-22 school year performed in math and reading over three years, and compared that against kids who started the same grades just prior to the pandemic.

Children who began kindergarten in the fall of 2021, for example, scored close to what kindergartners did prior to the pandemic in reading. But over the last few years, they鈥檝e fallen behind their counterparts. Kids who started first grade in the fall of 2021 have been consistently behind children who started first grade prior to the pandemic in reading.

In math, meanwhile, students who started kindergarten, first grade, and second grade in the fall of 2021 all started off scoring lower than their counterparts did prior to the pandemic. And they鈥檝e consistently made less progress 鈥� putting them 鈥渟ignificantly behind鈥� their peers.

Younger children made less progress than their pre-pandemic peers regardless of whether they went to schools in cities, suburbs, or rural communities. And the students who started off further behind had the most difficulty catching up.

Schools may want to consider changing up their academic interventions to focus more on early elementary schoolers, researchers said. It will be especially important to pinpoint exactly which missing skills kids need to master so they can follow along with lessons in their current grade, Huff added. This year, many of the report鈥檚 struggling students will be entering third and fourth grade.

In Charleston County, South Carolina, where others , especially in math, the district is using a few strategies that officials think have helped.

The district made . Officials purchased a new curriculum to better align with the science of reading, gave teachers , and started providing families more information about their kids鈥� academic performance.

Crucially, said Buffy Roberts, who oversees assessments for Charleston County schools, the district identified groups of kids who were very behind and what it would take to catch them up over several years. Taking a longer view helped teachers break down a big job and ensured kids who needed a lot of help got more support.

鈥淲e really helped people understand that if our students were already behind, making typical growth is great, but it鈥檚 not going to cut it,鈥� Roberts said. 鈥淚t was really thinking very strategically and being very targeted about what a child needs in order to get out of that, I hate to call it a hole, but it is a hole.鈥�

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The United States has a math crisis鈥攁nd it鈥檚 not just the students. It extends to those choosing how to spend federal pandemic relief dollars. Even when they choose the best prescriptions to make up for the pandemic鈥檚 learning losses, they are using the wrong dosage. It鈥檚 a multiplication problem.

The average student in the U.S. lost the equivalent of half a year of math instruction and a quarter of a year in reading. Many urban school districts that were closed for much of 2020-21, such as St. Louis and New Haven, lost one and a half years, but for simplicity鈥檚 sake, let鈥檚 start with the national average of half a year.

Let鈥檚 complete a math exercise together, focusing on four interventions proven to help students catch up: high-dosage tutoring, an extra period of math instruction, six weeks of summer school, and an extended school year. Pre-pandemic research suggests that the first three types of interventions generate the equivalent of one year, half a year, and a quarter of the typical year鈥檚 growth in math, respectively. Let鈥檚 assume that students receive the same amount of instruction in each additional week of school as they do during the school year. As illustrated by the chart, if 10% of students in any given district received 鈥渉igh-impact鈥� tutoring, 30% received double periods of math, 75% attended summer school, and 100% went to school for two and a half weeks longer, they would recover half a year of learning.

Challenging? Yes. But doable.

Inadequate responses

Unfortunately, I know of no district coming close to this level of intervention. Nationally, only 2% of students are receiving high-impact tutoring, where they are receiving about three hours a week of tutoring for 36 weeks, or about 108 hours total. Most districts are providing only 15-20 hours and only for a small percentage of students, nowhere near the 10% in my catch-up assumption.

Summer school attendance has been 15% or 20% in many urban districts, light years behind my assumed 75%.

I don鈥檛 have national data on the percentage of students receiving double doses of math, but I鈥檓 confident it is nowhere near 30%.

Further, very few school districts have extended their school year. The struggle in Richmond, Virginia illustrates the challenge. According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, students in third through eighth grade lost the equivalent of one and a half years of math and reading achievement between 2019 and 2022, more than any other district in Virginia. Starting in the spring of 2021, while schools were still closed, Superintendent Jason Kamras proposed a year-round calendar to help students catch up. Students would have one month off in the summer and four two-week breaks during the school year. Most students would still have 180 school days a year, but the district would select 5,000 students to receive up to 40 days of extra instruction during the breaks. His school board turned him down. Instead, they allowed him to pilot a longer school year in just two of the city鈥檚 54 schools. The two schools started this summer, and student attendance has been strong.

Leadership counts

As illustrated in Richmond, part of the challenge has been the absence of political leadership. To undertake the major reforms that would be required to help students catch up, school district leaders need political air cover.

As a U.S. senator, Lamar Alexander helped push through the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2015, which defined the federal role in K-12 education, returning significant power to the states. But states have largely declined the opportunity to lead, and the education reform effort in the U.S. has been rudderless. We鈥檙e a long way from the era when governors such as Bill Clinton (Arkansas), Jim Hunt (North Carolina), brothers George W. Bush (Texas) and Jeb Bush (Florida), as well as Alexander himself (who then led Tennessee) used a combination of the bully pulpit, funding, and policies to push an unprecedented wave of state-led reforms in the 1980s and 1990s.

Only recently have leaders such as Governor Jared Polis in Colorado and Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia begun to make improving students鈥� outcomes a centerpiece of their agendas, and not just a stage for culture wars.

There are some modest bright spots. Under Commissioner of Education Mike Morath鈥檚 leadership, Texas required districts to provide an additional 30 hours a week of small-group instruction to students in the lowest achievement category. It鈥檚 unlikely to be enough for many students, but it鈥檚 a lot more than what other states are providing.

Many states, such as Tennessee and Colorado, have launched tutoring initiatives鈥攁gain, a laudable move鈥攂ut none of these programs have the dosage levels that will produce a meaningful impact.

The federal government provided billions of additional dollars of pandemic-related support. When the American Rescue Plan passed in March of 2021, no one knew how large the achievement losses would be. And, wanting to preserve district flexibility, Congress only required districts to spend 20% of the money on academic catch-up (with a loose definition of what could count). The result was predictable. Much of the funding has gone to salary increases, HVAC systems, or additional school counselors. In the worst cases, states have allowed communities to use the federal funds to replace local tax revenues鈥攁 shell game that will help exactly zero children. In the end, only a small share of federal aid has been used to replace what students lost during the pandemic: instructional time.

Looking ahead

With a legal deadline to commit the funds by September 2024, school districts have one more year to spend their federal relief dollars. Given that budgets have been set and the 2023-24 school year is about to begin, it will be difficult for districts to scale up their plans for the coming school year. However, there is still time for districts to plan a major scale-up of summer learning for the summer of 2024. There鈥檚 even some hope of continuing the effort beyond next summer. Although the American Rescue Plan law requires districts to commit the funds by next September, the federal Department of Education has the authority to allow districts to spend down those funds over the following year (the legal term is 鈥渓iquidate鈥�), as long as the contracts are signed and the funds are obligated by the deadline. The Biden administration should prioritize extending the spending deadline for programs that increase students鈥� instructional time鈥攖utoring programs, summer learning, after-school programs, school vacation academies, and salary increases associated with an extended school year.

Although there鈥檚 still hope that districts will help younger students catch up, we cannot forget that four high school graduating classes鈥攔oughly 12 million students鈥攈ave already started their postsecondary careers. The data suggest it鈥檚 been a rough start. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, community college enrollment declined by a staggering 20% between spring 2019 and spring 2023. The number of students seeking bachelor鈥檚 degrees at public and private colleges declined by 6%.

We know remarkably little about what has driven the declines in postsecondary enrollment. Many have speculated that the hot labor market was to blame. However, there鈥檚 little concrete evidence to confirm this. It is also possible that the decline was connected to the learning losses in K-12. For instance, especially in areas that spent much of the 2020-21 school year in remote instruction, the high school graduating classes of 2020 and 2021 would have had a hard time meeting with their college counselors to explore their postsecondary options and get help with financial aid.

Moreover, students who fell behind in math or reading in eighth through 10th grades may not have had time to complete the advanced high school coursework expected of many science and engineering majors. According to the College Board, the number of students taking Advanced Placement exams in biology and calculus (both AB and BC) fell by 9% and 12%, respectively, while the number of students taking the chemistry exam declined by 21%. Even if college enrollment rates recover, such trends do not bode well for what may happen to the number of college students pursuing STEM degrees in the coming years.

State leadership need

To resolve this question, we need more research on the relationship between achievement losses, school closures, and changes in postsecondary enrollment by high school. The answer is of more than academic interest as the pace of recovery in the postsecondary sector may well depend on recovery in elementary and secondary schools.

Because many students will not have caught up by the time the federal relief dollars are spent, we must begin discussing additional policies to continue the recovery following September 2024. Anything requiring a school board vote or state legislative action will take time to enact.

For one, states and cities should set aside resources for reaching out to recent high school graduates who never enrolled in college and offer assistance in exploring postsecondary options and applying for federal financial aid. It would be foolish to allow them to fall through the cracks, as the nation鈥檚 future workforce needs will depend on their continued training and development.

In addition, states should ensure that future graduating classes have what they need before leaving high school. For instance, students who do not achieve proficiency on state tests at the end of eighth grade should receive additional help during ninth grade to ensure that they are on track for college and a career. States might consider offering students the option of a fifth year in high school or free tuition for their first year in community college, giving them a chance to fill in gaps in coursework they missed in high school as a result of pandemic achievement losses.

The academic recovery effort following the pandemic has been undersized from the beginning. Although the research community and federal and state regulators encouraged districts to focus on 鈥渆vidence-based鈥� solutions such as high-dosage tutoring and summer learning, districts were never given clear guidance on the dosages required or the share of students they should be serving. Moreover, the guidance that was provided鈥攕pecifically, the 20% minimum spending on 鈥渁cademic recovery鈥濃�攚as downright misleading.

The future consequence for students鈥攁nd for the nation鈥檚 economy鈥攊f students fail to catch up will be dire. A conservative estimate of the loss in future earnings for those enrolled in public K-12 education during the 2020-21 school year is聽$900 billion. As the federal relief dollars are spent down, state and local leaders must step up. Today, there are two or three candidates seeking the mantle of 鈥渆ducation governor.鈥� We need 50 of them.

July, 2024 Update: I wrote this essay late last summer, while the evidence was at its bleakest:聽districts were struggling to implement recovery efforts and researchers were reporting disappointing results for specific recovery efforts. Subsequently, the prospects of recovery brightened somewhat. In January 2024, our Harvard/Stanford team of researchers聽.聽In June 2024, we . We found that the federal relief did have an impact on the recovery. Even though the impact per dollar spent was much smaller than if the funding had been spent solely on tutoring or learning, the estimated impact was nevertheless in line with pre-pandemic research on the effect of general revenue increases. The projected earnings impact from the improvement was sufficient to justify the expenditure.

ESSER relief was like the first stage of a rocket:聽powerful, but unfocused and likely insufficient to get us all the way back to 2019 levels of achievement.聽After the 2024 NAEP is released in January 2025, we expect to update the Education Recovery Scorecard with district recovery through 2024. Soon after, we expect to write a second report on the impact of ESSER spending during 2023-24. We hope we are wrong, but our results thus far imply that many districts will remain behind 2019 levels when the federal money runs out.聽

It is alarming, then, that so many states have not even begun to discuss what they will do to continue the recovery after September 2024. Rather than provide additional general revenue as with ESSER, we hope states consider targeting aid at specific evidence-based solutions, such as tutoring or summer learning, especially in the districts which will remain behind. Otherwise, we will be forcing children to pay the price for the pandemic.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

Released Tuesday, from over 7.7 million students who took the widely used MAP Growth tests from NWEA doesn鈥檛 bode well for teens entering high school this fall. Finishing 4^th grade when the pandemic hit, many students not only lost at least a year of in-person learning, but also transitioned to middle school during a chaotic period of teacher vacancies and rising absenteeism.  

The 2023-24 results reflect the last tests administered before federal COVID relief funds run out. Districts must allocate any remaining funds by the end of September 鈥� a cutoff that is expected to cause further disruption as districts eliminate staff and programs aimed at learning recovery.

Older students don鈥檛 make gains as quickly as younger kids and will have to work harder to catch up, the researchers said. At the same time, the effects of the pandemic 鈥渃ontinue to reverberate鈥� for children in the early elementary grades, many of whom missed out on preschool because of COVID. On average, students need at least four extra months of schooling to catch up.

鈥淚t’s not fun to continue to bring this bad news to the education community, and I certainly wish it was a brighter story to tell,鈥� said Karyn Lewis, director of research and policy partnerships for NWEA. 鈥淚t is pretty frustrating for us, and I’m sure very disheartening for folks on the ground that are still working very hard to help kids recover.鈥�

Thus far, only two states, California and Colorado, have asked officials for extra time to spend the diminishing relief funds that remain, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That means the question for most leaders is how to keep paying for extra tutoring and staffing levels for students still learning below grade level 鈥� especially those belonging to groups that weren鈥檛 meeting expectations before the pandemic.

Relief money 鈥渕ade a difference, but it certainly did not eliminate the learning loss,鈥� said Dan Goldhaber, director of the . A he authored showed that recovery linked to those dollars was small, in part because the federal government gave districts few restrictions on how to spend it. 

The American Rescue Plan鈥檚 requirement that districts devote 20% of the $122 billion toward reversing learning decline was 鈥渟uper loosey goosey in terms of what that actually meant, how it was measured and what programs counted,鈥� he said.

Some districts that hired teaching assistants to give students additional practice in reading and math have now lost those positions. Dothan Preparatory Academy in Alabama, a seventh- and eighth-grade school, had several staff members who gave students 鈥渁 few extra lessons鈥� throughout the day based on their MAP scores, said Charles Longshore, an assistant principal. Now those positions are gone. 

He hopes a new sixth grade academy opening next month will better prepare kids for grade-level material. Two years ago, when he joined the Dothan City Schools, just north of the Florida Panhandle, he attended a districtwide administrator meeting where every school鈥檚 data was posted on the walls.  

He remembers looking at elementary school scores with 鈥渞eally low鈥� student proficiency rates of roughly 20% to 30%; teachers have been trying to fill those gaps ever since. 

鈥淲e’re trying to go backwards to go forwards,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hat third, fourth and fifth grade standards did you miss that are essential for your understanding of seventh and eighth grade standards?鈥�

The NWEA results show achievement gaps continuing to widen. For example, Asian students are showing some growth, but made fewer gains in math last year than during the pre-COVID years. White, Black and Hispanic students, however, continue to lose ground. In both elementary and middle school, Hispanic students need the most additional instruction to reach pre-COVID levels, the data shows.

In reading, the gap between pre-pandemic growth and current trends widened by an average of 36%, compared with 18% in math. It鈥檚 possible, NWEA’s Lewis added, that districts focused extra recovery efforts on math because initial data on learning loss showed those declines to be the most severe. 

But that鈥檚 left many students without the reading skills to tackle harder books and vocabulary as they move into high school, said Rebecca Kockler, who leads Reading Reimagined, a project of the nonprofit . The organization is funding research to find which literacy strategies work with adolescents, who are easily turned off by books intended for young kids.

The pandemic, she said, only exacerbated a longstanding literacy problem for older students.

鈥淎bout 30% of American high schoolers for 30 years have been proficient readers, and that really hasn’t changed,鈥� said Kockler, a former Louisiana assistant superintendent who oversaw a redesign of the state鈥檚 reading program. 鈥淚t鈥檚 always the hardest to move middle school reading results, and even some of the success we would see in fourth grade didn’t always carry up into middle school.鈥�

School closures were especially hard on students with learning disabilities. Both of Tracy Compton鈥檚 daughters, who are entering fifth and seventh grade this fall, have dyslexia and didn鈥檛 receive services during the pandemic when they were in the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. 

鈥淭he time they were learning to read was during the school board’s shutdown of schools,鈥� she said. Under a , the Fairfax district still pays for makeup services with a private tutor. 

But Compton also moved to a Massachusetts district where she feels her girls are getting the support they need, like access to audio books and noise-canceling headphones during tests to help them focus. 鈥淭hey have made progress, but [have] not fully recovered,鈥� she said.

She said too many parents don鈥檛 know their children are behind.

鈥淭hey see the report card with A’s or whatever and think all is fine,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey don’t know where else to check and how to weigh things like standardized tests.鈥�

That鈥檚 likely because different tests often tell different stories. The MAP results, for example, are worse than what many states have reported about student performance on their own assessments, which are used for accountability. 

Several states last year noted at least partial recovery, and a few showed students had even reached or were exceeding 2019 scores. Lewis explained that state tests measure the 鈥渂lunt designation between proficient or not,鈥� while MAP tests capture the full spectrum of student achievement levels during the school year.

Districts, particularly low-income districts that received the most funding, need to contend with the latest snapshots of students鈥� learning as they adjust to the end of federal relief funds, Goldhaber said. 

鈥淗ow districts go about dealing with the fiscal cliff is going to have pretty significant consequences, particularly for the kids that were most impacted by the pandemic,鈥� he said. If districts have to lay off staff 鈥� and newer teachers are the first to go 鈥� they should limit the impact on the neediest students. 鈥淭hey鈥檒l be shuffling teachers within districts, and that shuffle itself is harmful for student achievement.鈥�

As more time passes since the pandemic, Lewis added that school leaders might be tempted to stop comparing their students鈥� performance to pre-COVID levels, when states were in closing achievement gaps. 

鈥淲hat keeps me up at night is this idea that these persistent achievement gaps are inevitable, that this is just how it’s going to be,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 don’t think that’s the case, but I do think it takes innovation and creative thinking 鈥� to get us out of this mess.鈥�

But the social scientists who authored the research argue that federal dollars could have been spent in ways that would have helped scores bounce back faster. The per-dollar returns of ESSER, the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, measure up poorly in comparison with those of previously studied efforts to boost achievement, from reducing class sizes to implementing more rigorous curricula.

Dan Goldhaber, the lead author of and the director of the , said he believed the crisis conditions of the pandemic made it 鈥渉ard to spend the ESSER funding in thoughtful, effective ways.鈥�

By his own estimate, 35% of the math recovery achieved during the 2022鈥�23 school year was directly attributable to ESSER funding. Fully 87% of English recovery was credited to ESSER, though he found that gains in that subject were statistically insignificant. Still, he said, that upward movement was limited. 

“Candidly, I think the impact was small, and there are some reasons why it wasn’t larger,鈥� Goldhaber said. 鈥淥nly 20% of ESSER money was even earmarked for learning loss, and I don’t think there was a lot of oversight of whether that 20% was well spent.”

The findings offer a split verdict on the post-COVID academic recovery, while somewhat strengthening the case that putting more resources into schools can elevate their results. The advances measured in both studies are virtually identical not only to one another, but also to earlier, wide-ranging estimates of the impact of additional money on schools.

ESSER was one of the best-known and longest-lasting pillars of Washington鈥檚 pandemic response. Years after stimulus checks and free nasal swabs stopped arriving in the mail, many districts are still spending down the aid they received through the program. The last of the supplemental aid will not expire until this September, four years after schools first began to reopen for in-person instruction.

Notably, however, both papers project that American students will not have returned to their pre-COVID learning trajectories by then, and that the cost of a full restoration could amount to hundreds of billions more. With no sign of any further assistance coming from Congress, that bill will need to be picked up by states 鈥� if it is paid at all. 

In the meantime, ESSER鈥檚 backers can point to real, if incomplete, progress.

Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon helps lead the , which released a second study on Wednesday. In an interview, he noted that the federal cash injection was the equivalent of of the country鈥檚 annual K鈥�12 spending, spread over multiple years. While it might have been used more efficiently to stem further learning loss, he added, both national and state leaders were simultaneously focused on goals like reopening schools and alleviating the severe emotional distress that many children are still facing.

鈥淥ne can certainly imagine ways to spend the money that would lead to even more learning gains,鈥� Reardon said. 鈥淏ut that wasn’t entirely what was on policymakers’ minds when they sent out the money.”

鈥楢 huge missed opportunity鈥�

To pinpoint the impact of additional money on COVID-era learning, the two studies take advantage of differences in how the federal funding was awarded to individual districts.

The total ESSER expenditure was fueled by three laws setting aside $13 billion in March 2020, $57 billion in December of that year, and a further $122 billion the following March. Because there was no data showing where learning loss was most concentrated at that time, dollars were allocated to school districts based on their pre-pandemic grants from Title I, the Department of Education鈥檚 main program benefiting disadvantaged children.  

But not all districts received comparable amounts, even if they served similar numbers of needy students. Instead, governing Title I 鈥� including rules that ensure small states receive minimum allotments, as well as larger sums being granted to states with higher per-pupil spending 鈥� introduced significant spending gaps between different schools. Those disparities were significantly magnified as each new emergency funding bill was passed, said Harvard economist Thomas Kane, Reardon鈥檚 co-author. 

“With the second two ESSER packages, the federal government was essentially pushing $175 billion through pipes that were meant to handle $16 billion in Title I,鈥� Kane said. 鈥淪o what might have been a $500 or $600 difference per student in Title I dollars became a $5,000 or $6,000 difference in ESSER funding per student.” 

Both Goldhaber and the Education Recovery Scorecard team accessed standardized test results from the Stanford Education Data Archive, which compiles student scores from different local exams to allow for cross-state comparisons. In each of their studies, $1,000 in ESSER spending per student was found to raise math scores by 0.008 of a standard deviation (a scientific measure showing the distance from a statistical mean).

In the world of education research, an improvement of that size is considered small: something like one-tenth of a medium-sized effect. But the average conceals substantial variation across different states, and many school districts received much more than $1,000 per student. 

As an example, Reardon, Kane, and their collaborators identified 704 districts in which over 70% of students were eligible for free and reduced-price lunch 鈥� a commonly used proxy for poverty 鈥� then compared the results for those that received unusually large ESSER allocations (more than $8,600 per pupil) to those that received much less (less than $4,600 per pupil). 

The differences were striking. The working-class district of Brockton, Massachusetts was awarded $3,224 per student from the second and third ESSER funding bills, and its students鈥� math achievement improved by the equivalent of .06 grade levels between 2022 and 2023; but in Dayton, Ohio, per-pupil funding increased almost three times as much ($11,444), and math scores jumped by a factor of 10 (.65 grade levels).

Goldhaber argued that figures like those cast considerable doubt on the proposition that the U.S. government鈥檚 emergency relief to schools was mostly wasted.

鈥淥ne of the ideas that’s out there is that we spent $190 billion and got nothing,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 don’t think that’s the right answer.鈥�

Yet he also voiced disappointment that neither Washington nor states had directly measured what kinds of ESSER spending (tutoring programs or school renovations, improved ventilation or increased staffing) were correlated with higher performance. Despite its huge cost and high stakes, Goldhaber concluded, ESSER was simply 鈥渘ot designed to learn from what districts do.鈥�

鈥淭o my mind, that makes it a huge missed opportunity. We can see that there are pretty big differences across states and districts in the degree of catch-up.”

鈥榃ho鈥檚 going to pick up the reins?鈥�

While the studies can shed little light on the most successful aspects of ESSER, they will be collectively seen as a major contribution to the research on school finance reforms. This is true both because of the scale of the government鈥檚 intervention 鈥� perhaps the single greatest natural experiment on the effects of windfall cash on schools that has ever been attempted 鈥� and the consistency of the papers鈥� results. 

Not only do the findings of both studies mirror one another, they also hew closely to those of , published in January, that gathered the results of dozens of previous experiments in increased school funding. That paper also pointed to an average test-score increase of about .032 standard deviations per $1,000 spent over four years, or roughly .008 annually.

Marguerite Roza, head of Georgetown University鈥檚 finance-focused Edunomics Lab, called the coinciding findings 鈥渞eassuring.鈥�

Yet she also noted the 鈥渨ildly expensive鈥� cost of sending operating aid to states that was not specifically dedicated to learning recovery. According to Goldhaber鈥檚 calculations, the government would need to spend an additional $450鈥�$650 billion to fund a full return to levels of academic achievement last seen in 2019; Reardon and Kane tallied a likely cost of just over $904 billion. 

Whether or not those figures represent the true price tag, Roza said, states that intend to replace federal dollars should be more consistent in disbursing them and more stringent about what they pay for.

鈥淲hy repeat the same strategy given how unevenly the dollars were distributed and how uneven the effects were on districts and states?鈥� Roza asked. 鈥淕iven what we know now, any new federal dollars for recovery should probably be structured differently.鈥�

But in Kane鈥檚 view, that recommendation may be too optimistic. With just a few months left before the deadline to spend ESSER funds, he observed, too few state authorities had even committed to picking up the torch of learning recovery. 

鈥淚n most states, there hasn’t even been a discussion started about what the state role will be now that the federal money is running out,鈥� he said. 鈥淥ur results are basically saying that there was a positive effect, but it wasn’t enough. Now who’s going to pick up the reins?鈥�

The Council of Chief State School Officers representatives of a dozen major education organizations, state departments and local districts to share stories about their most successful efforts and how they plan to maintain the programs that yielded the best outcomes as budgets tighten. 社区黑料鈥檚 Beth Hawkins moderated one of the sessions, which showcased one district鈥檚 decision to collect data on what was working.

Organizers have released videos of the panels, focusing on innovative efforts at the state, district and school levels. In one, North Carolina officials to create an office of learning recovery within the state Department of Public Instruction, which will conduct research to help legislators make data-informed decisions about K-12 policy. The state also built a 鈥渇unding cliff dashboard鈥� for school systems to use as they confront the end of the federal aid.

Attendees also heard from a who slashed student office referrals to one third of pre-pandemic rates by gathering detailed, personal information on young people’s well-being and changing expectations for how staff spend their time. Teachers and administrators now join students for an extended lunch period, for example, and school leaders frequently ask students about everything from stress to thoughts of suicide, instead of relying on teacher referrals to support staff.

On Hawkins鈥檚 panel,  Adam Kunz, assistant superintendent of St. Paul Public Schools, and Indianapolis Public Schools Deputy Superintendent Andrew Strope delved into how their districts with 鈥�right-sizing鈥� efforts despite an infusion of cash that they could have used to forestall painful decisions. Instead, both school systems spent their federal funds on the recovery efforts that showed the strongest returns on investment.

In addition to fixing longstanding inequities in how special education and gifted and talented services are provided, Indianapolis invested in a high-dosage tutoring effort credited with reducing lost ground in math and reading to a third of losses in similar districts. 

St. Paul鈥檚 presentation described the district鈥檚 decision to plan for the end of federal funding even before the money arrived and showcased a novel high school credit recovery effort that has yielded major gains in student engagement and graduation readiness.

Here are videos of the other sessions on the program:

North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt and state Sen. Michael Lee talk with CCSSO CEO Carissa Moffat Miller about their state鈥檚 creation of a research hub to collect data on effective recovery efforts that lawmakers can tap when deciding education policy priorities. 

Georgia Association of Secondary School Principals鈥� 2023 Middle School Principal of the Year Suzan Harris and eighth-grader Carter Glover describe dramatic improvements in their Jackson school鈥檚 disciplinary climate and ability to support student mental health.

CCSSO鈥檚 2023 National Teacher of the Year Rebecka Peterson talks to educator Jo-Anne Smith of Waterbury, Vermont, about her role as a kindergarten intervention specialist at Brookside Primary School.

Roberto Rodriguez, assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development with the U.S. Department of Education, talks with Council of the Great City Schools Executive Director Ray Hart about opportunities to continue the most effective ESSER investments.聽

However, focusing on that type of COVID recovery framework feels less and less meaningful with each passing day. Since the start of the pandemic, most students have moved up multiple grade levels (or graduated!), and districts are already in the last year of their federal emergency COVID relief funds. 

There isn鈥檛 and won鈥檛 be an educational equivalent to the World Health Organization or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proclaiming the end to the global health emergency. But it鈥檚 time for a new framework that shifts from a temporary recovery mindset to a more lasting and permanent emphasis on growth, equity and continuous improvement. 

What could that look like? There鈥檚 a growing consensus around three key levers: getting kids back in school, expanding and monitoring high-dose tutoring and increasing summer or afterschool learning time. Along with the Biden administration鈥檚 recent proposal for $8 billion in , researchers such as are all pointing to the same problem areas and potential solutions. 

Three structural shifts must happen to address the needs of the next generation.

First, students must get back in school. consistently that attendance, behavioral infractions and successful completion of academic coursework are strong predictors of outcomes like high school graduation, college attendance and college persistence. That鈥檚 true even after controlling for a student鈥檚 standardized test scores. In fact, in , NWEA鈥檚 Megan Kuhfeld and colleagues at the University of Maryland and Stanford found that measuring academic behaviors such as regular attendance also did a good job of capturing other social-emotional skills like self-management, a belief in one鈥檚 ability to succeed, growth mindset and empathy for others from diverse backgrounds. 

Their work also uncovered a promising nugget for policymakers. Given how strongly partial-day absenteeism predicted long-run outcomes, policymakers could consider tracking and monitoring it closely. Other factors, such as tardiness, referrals for in-school discipline and participation in extracurricular activities are also relatively easy to measure and potentially contain rich information about students. Tracking these interim outcomes 鈥� and then helping students improve on them 鈥� is likely to help boost longer-term outcomes as well. 

Second, students who need it most should receive high-dosage tutoring. There鈥檚 finding that students who complete high-dosage tutoring post impressively in test scores when those programs are implemented appropriately. That research has convinced to create or expand their tutoring programs. But as the federal ESSER funding cliff approaches, policymakers should work with local education leaders to sustain high-quality, high-dose tutoring programs that are delivering the biggest gains for academically at-risk students. 

Third, schools should provide extra learning time through summer programs. Like tutoring, intensive, short-term interventions during summer vacations and other school breaks have shown success in raising student achievement. Multiple studies on the effects of summer learning programs have found positive impacts on student outcomes, especially in . Those producing the strongest gains tend to offer for and pair struggling students with the most effective teachers.

Learning programs during shorter school breaks can also boost student achievement. For example, the Lawrence, Massachusetts, district offered week-long acceleration academies to students who were having difficulty in a particular subject. They were placed in small groups of 10 to 12 and taught by carefully selected educators. In total, students received about 25 hours of extra instruction per week, and the program was a key part of the district鈥檚 successful . 

As the sun sets on the COVID recovery era, state and district leaders will need to be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of their investments in things like tutoring, summer programs and acceleration efforts. It has always been important to understand which programs or interventions are working, for which students and at what cost. Those questions must now be part of the new normal.

But do you remember what pi actually stands for? What the number represents? 

And have you ever heard of #DressforSTEM Day, which is also March 14? 

No? Here鈥檚 fourth-grader Ada with everything you need to know: 

Ada knows what Pi is, but how many adults do? 社区黑料’s Jim Fields asked the people of Philadelphia 鈥� and the results are hilarious:

STEM Superstars: In honor of Pi Day, here are five inspiring teens creating STEM breakthroughs: 

And in celebration of Women鈥檚 History Month, 社区黑料鈥檚 Trinity Alicia explores women鈥檚 ongoing impact in STEM and how a hashtag is driving the Pi Day conversation to representation of women in the field:

In honor of 3.14, we recently canvassed the country, searching out STEM students with noteworthy projects and inventions. You can see all our recent profiles on our STEM Superstars microsite; here are our most recent video profiles of four remarkable teenagers: 

Helping Amputees 鈥� Virginia鈥檚 Arav Bhargava

The 18-year-old senior at The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia has developed a universal fit, 3D-printed prosthetic for amputees missing their forearms. (Read the full story) 

Confronting Depression & Suicide 鈥� New York鈥檚 Natasha Kulviwat

The 17-year-old from Jericho researched a biomarker to help identify those at risk of suicide. (Read the full story) 

Easing Anxiety 鈥� Philadelphia鈥檚 Gavriela Beatrice Kalish-Schur

The 18-year-old senior at Pennsylvania鈥檚 Julia R. Masterman High School gave fruit flies anxiety to gain a deeper understanding for what makes us anxious 鈥� and to pave the path for better treatments. (Read the full story) 

Improving Rural Health Care 鈥� Maryland鈥檚 William Gao

The 18-year-old from Ellicott City鈥檚 Centennial High School created an AI-enabled diagnostic app that could help save rural cancer patients. (Read the full story) 

And in honor of March 14 and Women’s History Month, 社区黑料’s Trinity Alicia explores women’s ongoing impact in STEM and how a hashtag is driving the Pi Day conversation to representation of women in the field:

At the height of the pandemic, in spring 2020, Maria O. her husband and four children were quarantined in their one-bedroom apartment in South Los Angeles, each vying for privacy, quiet and adequate technology to work and attend school remotely.

There weren鈥檛 enough tablets or laptops, and Wi-Fi was glitchy. Her children ended up logging into online classes using their parents鈥� phones. While the children once loved school, they started falling behind academically. Everyone grew frustrated. 

鈥淧eople on the outside don鈥檛 know the impact that remote learning had on families like us,鈥� said Maria O.聽 鈥淚t was hard and it was stressful. We stayed afloat, but it wasn鈥檛 easy.鈥�

Maria O.鈥檚 family is among a dozen Californians who聽聽against the state, claiming that in many schools, remote learning was so inconsistent and ineffective that thousands of students 鈥� especially low-income, Black and Latino students 鈥� were denied their right to an education. She and other plaintiffs in the case were not identified by their full names in court documents and asked to remain anonymous when interviewed in order to protect their children鈥檚 privacy.

The  this month in Alameda County Superior Court, which issued an order that the state introduce legislation requiring schools to spend the remaining $2 billion in COVID relief funds to help students who were most impacted by remote learning recover academically and emotionally from the pandemic. That could include tutoring, counseling, after-school activities and other steps.

The impact of school shutdowns

But beyond the settlement details, the case has drawn attention to the magnitude of learning loss during the pandemic. Despite herculean efforts by school staff to keep students engaged during remote classes, learning loss 鈥� especially among students who were struggling before the pandemic 鈥� is a crisis that could harm a generation of students, researchers said.

鈥淲e can measure the impact of lost quality instruction, but the implications of a traumatic few academic years are much bigger for student health, mental health and well-being,鈥� said Joe Bishop, co-founder of UCLA鈥檚 Center for the Transformation of Schools. 鈥淚n the same way we rush to support families after a wildfire or school shooting, we have to deploy assistance to help students, especially youth of color, with the same sense of urgency.鈥�

Bishop and his team at UCLA聽on learning loss on behalf of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. They interviewed teachers, administrators, counselors and school staff at all levels. They found that remote learning exacerbated pre-existing inequities and that most educators believe the state offered insufficient guidance on how to navigate the pandemic.

But with California鈥檚 decentralized education system, the state鈥檚 authority was limited, said Elizabeth Sanders, a spokesperson for the California Department of Education. Still, the department provided ample assistance for schools under difficult circumstances, she said.

鈥淐ertainly, there were clear needs for support that students and families had during the pandemic. (The Department of Education) and Superintendent (Tony) Thurmond acted immediately to try to meet those needs,鈥� Sanders said. 鈥淎nd when new needs arose, we stepped in to provide help every step of the way.鈥�

For example, when some districts struggled to get laptops or tablets for every student, the state leveraged its connections to manufacturers to deliver enough devices to districts, even amid a global shortage, she said. In addition, the state provided a host of online resources for schools, addressing聽,听,听聽campuses,听聽and other topics.聽

Nonetheless, too many districts were 鈥渇lying in dangerous conditions without a control tower, or central place of support,鈥� Bishop said. 鈥淭hey were largely left alone to weather the COVID storm.鈥� 

While some districts fared relatively well during remote learning, others struggled to meet students鈥� basic needs. That included everything from providing enough devices and Wi-Fi hotspots, to addressing students鈥� mental health needs, to offering adequate academic instruction.

鈥淪chools and districts felt isolated and on their own dealing with this extraordinary moment in our history,鈥� Bishop said. 鈥淭hey had to be public health experts, help parents find jobs and housing, provide IT support.鈥�

The UCLA researchers also looked at solutions to a problem they say stretches far beyond the realm of schools. They said the Department of Education needs support from the Legislature and other agencies to create a long-term roadmap for recovery. It should include a comprehensive plan to address staffing shortages, expand mental health services and target services to students who need them the most, among other steps.

鈥淩ight now there鈥檚 not a clear compass for where we鈥檙e headed and what we鈥檙e doing about it,鈥� Bishop said. 鈥淟earning has been stagnant, but as a state, what are we doing about it? This is a question we need to answer.鈥�

Parents鈥� frustrations

Kelly R., another plaintiff in the lawsuit, said she鈥檚 hopeful the settlement funds will help students across California regain lost ground. 

During remote learning, her three daughters, who were enrolled in Los Angeles Unified, experienced shortened school days and large amounts of independent work they struggled to complete. Kelly R., a case manager, was working from home, and because the family lived in an airplane path, Wi-Fi was unreliable.聽聽

Her children were falling behind academically, lost their self confidence and started disliking school, she said. This was especially frustrating, she said, because just a few miles away in more affluent neighborhoods, students were attending in-person learning pods paid for by their parents, and staying on top of their academics.

鈥淚t was stressful, discouraging. I had a sense of helplessness. I kept asking myself, what could I have done better?鈥� she said. 鈥淢aybe if we had been in a different tax bracket, things would have gone differently.鈥�

Compton Unified rebounds

Compton Unified, in Los Angeles County, has rebounded almost entirely from the pandemic, according to the . Last year, English language arts scores actually surpassed the 2019 results, while math scores jumped 5.8% to nearly meet the pre-pandemic score. The graduation rate was 89% last year, two percentage points higher than in 2019. Chronic absenteeism was still high last year, but it was lower than the state average of 24%.

Superintendent Darin Brawley credits a heavy investment in tutoring and mental health services, some of which pre-date the pandemic. The district used its COVID relief funds to contract with four tutoring agencies and expand mental health curriculum at all schools, for families as well as students. It also operates 30 on-campus wellness centers that offer services such as mental health counseling, yoga and mindfulness and crisis intervention.

Brawley also credits an early reopening plan. Some students, including English learners and those in special education, began returning to in-person school in October 2020, months before most other schools reopened.

鈥淏ecause of that, our students have done a little better. The drops were not as significant,鈥� Brawley said. 鈥淎lthough we鈥檙e not where I want us to be.鈥�

Brawley said he鈥檚 heartened by the settlement, but its success will depend on whether the money actually benefits students who were most affected by remote learning. Accountability and follow-up will be key, he said.

鈥淭his case is extremely important. You cannot deny that Black and brown and low-income students were significantly impacted by the pandemic,鈥� Brawley said. 鈥淏ut the devil will be in the details.鈥�

California鈥檚 education landscape, in context

California鈥檚 learning loss was not the worst in the country, by a long shot. California is actually in the middle of the pack nationwide,  from the Stanford Graduate School of Education released last month. California schools have seen less dramatic recovery than other states, but the initial loss wasn鈥檛 as great.

Nationwide, the recovery for some districts has been remarkable, said Sean Reardon, co-author of the study and a Stanford University education professor. While some districts, especially those in low-income areas, are still behind, some have made significant strides to catch up. Overall, students have rebounded by 25% in reading and 33% in math, far exceeding students鈥� typical progress in a year, according to the report. 

He said teachers deserve credit for those improvements, helping students stay on track academically while addressing a host of other demands.

鈥淭he question is, will the recovery be sustained as (COVID relief) funds run out this year,鈥� Reardon said. 鈥淲e also need to look at the strategy going forward.鈥�

For Maria O., who works as a case manager, the effects from the pandemic still linger. Her children managed to stay afloat, thanks in part to tutoring and other support from Community Coalition, a South Los Angeles nonprofit that focuses on social justice. But they鈥檙e not as enthusiastic about school as they once were.

Her son, who鈥檚 in high school, is especially disengaged, she said. Although he鈥檚 doing OK  academically, he often wants to skip class, she said, and she worries about him.

鈥淚 didn鈥檛 take part in this lawsuit for my kids, though. I did it for the kids who don鈥檛 have the support that my kids do,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 want to give them a voice.鈥澛�

This story was originally published on CalMatters.

Released this morning through Stanford鈥檚 right-leaning Hoover Institution, the report prior by its author, one of the nation鈥檚 most cited experts on education finance. Hanushek has cautioned since the emergence of COVID that the prolonged experience of virtual instruction would meaningfully harm the skills and earning potential of today鈥檚 students.

His newest release builds on those predictions by examining the math performance of U.S. students on two standardized tests. One, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), is a worldwide exam comparing American 15-year-olds against adolescents in dozens of other countries; the other, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (often referred to as the Nation鈥檚 Report Card) is administered to fourth- and eighth-graders around the United States.

The PISA results, revealed in December, showed U.S. math scores falling significantly between 2018 and 2022, offering more evidence of what federal officials have called a COVID-era 鈥渃risis鈥� in that subject. But because other countries saw even larger declines, America鈥檚 international ranking actually moved upward slightly, leading Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to the Biden administration鈥檚 emergency assistance to schools during the pandemic.

In an interview with 社区黑料, Hanushek was much less sanguine, pointing to K鈥�12 students鈥� persistently mediocre performance in math over the last few decades. After overlaying the NAEP math scores of individual U.S. states onto PISA鈥檚 international scoring system, he found that even test takers in the top-scoring state, Massachusetts, ranked below their counterparts in 15 other countries. The lowest-performing American jurisdiction, Puerto Rico, placed below developing nations like Kosovo, El Salvador and Cambodia.

鈥淧eople in the past , ‘Massachusetts is doing pretty well, maybe we could get New Mexico going like that too,鈥欌�� Hanushek said. 鈥淏ut if our best-performing state school system is 16th in the world, compared to the average kids in other countries, that doesn’t seem good to me.”

In general, the analysis shows, the top-line U.S. math ranking on PISA rose primarily because the pandemic鈥檚 disruptions to schooling were much more acutely felt in countries like Slovenia and Norway, which had been among the top performers on earlier iterations of the test.

Overall, students in relatively higher-scoring countries on the 2018 PISA exam sustained larger losses during COVID than those in countries that hadn鈥檛 done as well previously. Hanushek called the trend a 鈥渟traightforward鈥� validation of the importance of high-quality schools: Canadian students stood to lose more from weeks or months of online classes than those in less-effective Philippine schools.

鈥淚f you weren’t learning very much in school before the pandemic, you didn’t lose as much,鈥� he said. 鈥淚f you were learning a lot in school before the pandemic, you tended to lose more.”

The United States, long mired in the middle of the international pack, saw somewhat smaller math declines between 2018 and 2022 than the PISA average. Meanwhile, in spite of the clear trend, high-achieving East Asian countries like Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and South Korea actually improved in the subject during the pandemic. 

The learning loss exhibited in both NAEP and PISA strongly suggests that the long-term prospects of affected students will be substantially worse than they would have been otherwise. Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said this is largely due to the very nature of the American economy, in which skills and educational attainment are more highly prized than almost anywhere else in the world.

鈥淭he U.S. is a society in which skills really do matter for economic success,鈥� West said. 鈥淲hat that means is that the impact of learning loss on individual students through their earnings is going to be larger in the U.S. than it might be in a society like Sweden.鈥�

Wide state variation

Hanushek鈥檚 total calculation for the cost of learning loss, a staggering $31 trillion through the year 2100, is a figure that would dwarf the economic damage wrought by the business closures and layoffs necessitated by COVID鈥檚 spread, or even the years of stalled dynamism following the Great Recession. 

The projection is based on prior economic research into the connection between students鈥� test scores and future earnings. Hanushek further posits that the aggregate slowdown in innovation and human capital development will tend to slow the U.S. economy鈥檚 growth over the long haul, burdening even those who didn鈥檛 experience learning loss themselves.

The analysis estimates a far greater toll than that of another prominent prediction. In 2022, economists Thomas Kane of Harvard and Douglas O. Staiger of Dartmouth used eighth-grade math results on the NAEP exam following the pandemic. While that estimate pointed to a 1.6 percent decline in students鈥� future earnings, Hanushek and co-author Bradley Strauss believe that slump will fall between 5 and 6 percent.

Staiger said his paper with Kane represented a 鈥渓owball estimate鈥� while Hanushek鈥檚 offers an upper-bound projection, adding that most of the discrepancy between their findings likely stemmed from Hanushek鈥檚 broader lens on overall growth in addition to direct earnings. Whatever their differences, however, he noted that even marginal losses in productivity could eventually amount to considerable squandered potential.

鈥淭here are some that find smaller effects of test scores on economic growth, particularly for high-income countries like the U.S.,鈥� Staiger wrote in an email. 鈥淗owever, as Hanushek and Strauss make clear, even small impacts of the learning loss on future economic growth impose enormous costs on society.鈥� 

If Hanushek鈥檚 analysis proves correct, those costs will be borne unevenly. The largest state economies, such as California, Texas, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania, are all projected to absorb losses greater than $500 billion; their disproportionate burden reflects both the scope of their learning setbacks to this point and the number of future workers living in each. 

Individual income losses are also projected to differ considerably depending on location. By the paper鈥檚 calculations, students affected by the pandemic will lose less than 2 percent of their lifetime earnings in Utah, where math scores fell the least between 2019 and 2022. In West Virginia, Delaware, and Oklahoma, where they fell the most, former students could forgo an average of 9 percent of their career income.

Sarah Cohodes, an economist at the University of Michigan, said that the inequity of learning loss was a cause for particular concern. While the math performance of all students suffered between 2020 and the present, the losses were especially large for those who were already struggling or navigating critical life changes when COVID emerged. She referred to her own daughter, who wasn鈥檛 yet enrolled in a K鈥�12 school when the pandemic began, as an example.

“She lost a year of preschool, but she’s going to be fine 鈥� she hung out with me and went to all the parks in New York City,鈥� Cohodes said. 鈥淭he people I worry about are the ones who were transitioning between elementary and middle school, or who graduated from high school and missed out on some of the final preparations for what comes next.”

Hanushek, whose preferred strategy for learning recovery is to provide financial incentives to top teachers in exchange for taking on more students, observed that the worst-off students were likely the high schoolers who graduated or dropped out over the last few years. The unsuccessful efforts to mitigate their academic reversals, whether led by state or federal officials, were evidence that education authorities 鈥渉ave not really taken seriously the magnitude of this event,” he argued.

“My calculation is that 17 million kids [affected by the pandemic] have already left school,鈥� Hanushek said. 鈥淥nce they’ve left school, we have little hope of ever fixing their problems. Universities or firms are not going to make up for the lack of learning that these kids suffered, and each year that goes by, we lose four or five million more kids that will never recover.”

Disclosure: The Hoover Institution provides financial support to 社区黑料.

Nevertheless, we at the Center on Reinventing Public Education are jumping into the deep end with 10 predictions about the prospects for learning recovery and innovation in public education in 2024. Unlike cable news pundits, who rarely hold themselves accountable for their (often faulty) predictions, we will grade ourselves and report back at the end of the year. Some of these predictions are optimistic, some less so. Whether or not these predictions come to pass will depend on what those in positions of influence do this year to shape the future. 

1. Districts serious about addressing learning loss and innovation will have to transform their staffing practices. Enrollment declines and the end of federal pandemic funding will lead to teacher layoffs and strikes. Academic and mental health needs will compound. Will districts just spiral downward or will they develop of staffing schools by having teachers specialize, work in teams and use technology and non-traditional educators such as parents and mentors to be more sustainable and efficient? Look to places like Mesa, Arizona, and Ector County, Texas, that are leading the way on innovative staffing models.

2. Districts that fail to innovate will require state intervention. Some districts are in anticipation of these challenges. But too many are not, and states will once again be in a position of contemplating takeovers for districts in academic and fiscal crisis. It will fall on the reform community to propose solutions. Time to prepare!

3. Expect more lawsuits and advocacy on behalf of kids who are not recovering lost learning. New data will continue to spotlight students who have not bounced back from learning losses and the districts that are not doing enough for them. Lawsuits will follow. is a start. Get ready for more suits and advocacy for evidence-based solutions in 2024 as the long-term impacts of the pandemic become more evident. 

4. Leading districts will show how to use generative artificial intelligence  to radically personalize learning, especially for kids on the margins. Districts are with adaptive textbooks and assessments, AI-enabled intervention plans for struggling students, customized career counseling and more. But the majority (and the highest-poverty) districts will have deer-in-the-headlights moments because the feds and states will fail to provide large-scale teacher training and policy guidance, as other countries are doing. It will be up to the reform, business and donor communities to keep focus on the issue and ensure the U.S. does not fall behind in preparing teachers and students for this fifth industrial revolution. Education policy leaders will also have to combat the inevitable backlash against AI due to fear, misunderstanding and a lack of preparation among educators and parents.

5. Solving for attendance and absenteeism will be paramount. Students can鈥檛 learn if they don鈥檛 show up. The numbers are : A new shows that nationwide, chronic absenteeism 鈥� where students miss more than 10% of the school year 鈥� surged from 15% in 2018 to 28% in 2022. While the 2023 data showed improvement, chronic absenteeism rates still remained 75% higher than the pre-pandemic baseline. Schools will need to conduct greater outreach and work more closely with community-based organizations and families, both to compel students to attend school consistently. But school systems and policymakers also need better information about what is at the root of low attendance. There may need to be a reckoning about the overall value proposition of school. This may be the year to finally consider how school in general, but high school in particular, can be more engaging, relevant and responsive to student and family needs?

6.  School boards will have to withstand political upheaval everywhere, from both the left and the right. Who doesn鈥檛 love an election year? National politics will play out in local school board agendas and continue to pull school leaderships鈥� focus away from teaching and learning. Watch out for AI as a hot-button privacy issue! Schools and districts that project calm and focus on instruction will succeed, despite growing political agitation.

7.  States will take charter schools more seriously as it becomes clear that many families don鈥檛 want to attend district-run schools anymore, and that largely unregulated education savings accounts and ad hoc instructional programs produce a lot of failures, abuses and inequities. Common-sense solutions will be needed to make charters and ESAs work for the families most in need, and to help school districts adapt and compete in states with many forms of school choice. 

8. Good instruction will come back into vogue as central to achieving equity. But it will not be easy. As districts struggle with high levels of educator burnout and fewer high-quality for open positions, innovative schools that balance rigor with 21st century skills and use new educators strategically will thrive. This is a huge opportunity for the charter sector, with all its flexibility. 

9. College access will be cool again. The post-pandemic trend of declining college enrollment and attainment among low-income students will push the reform community to reconsider strategies for getting kids to higher ed. But career-relevant learning is not going away. Strategies for college access and attainment will necessarily involve more , customized and relevant high school models. Instructional strategies will shift as the role of the teacher changes and as more educators orient themselves to technology-driven solutions and AI-enabled tools.

10. Barring collective action, public education (and pandemic learning losses) will as a key voter concern, even during a presidential election year. It may take a decade or more for the U.S. to recover from pandemic learning losses if districts don鈥檛 remain focused on learning recovery interventions. CRPE鈥檚 latest report showed that schools are not on track and called for an immediate course correction. Now more than ever, researchers, policymakers and advocates must find new and more powerful ways to convince people that addressing learning loss is critical to our nation鈥檚 future.