NewDEAL Charts Course for Recovery From Pandemic-Era Learning Disruptions
By Dan McCue | The Well News
A new brief from the NewDEAL Forum outlines the steps its members believe state and local leaders can take to help struggling students get back on track after pandemic-era disruptions.
According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress — otherwise known as the Nation’s Report Card — many students continue to feel the impact of the global pandemic in their classrooms and are performing below pre-pandemic levels in reading and math.
In addition, the congressionally mandated measure of student learning found that students from low-income communities are struggling the most to catch up, at a time when communities across the nation are slashing budgets in the face of declining federal support.
Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, the Report Card also confirmed that students who needed the most help before COVID are further behind than the same group before the pandemic.
The NewDEAL brief grew out of conversations begun at the NewDEAL’s annual conference late last year.
They were led by Ethan Ashley, a former Orleans Parish, Louisiana, school board member, NewDEAL alumnus, and CEO and co-founder of School Board Partners.
The other participants were Chad Aldeman, of Read Not Guess; Kris Amundson, of KJA Strategies; and Sarah Mehrotra, then a policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education.
Together, the group had the following top-line recommendations for local elected officials:
Dive deep into data to understand which communities have been hit hardest.
Invest in rigorous, high-impact tutoring interventions.
Prioritize related initiatives like early learning and affordable housing programs; and
Focus on combating the growing problem of chronic absenteeism.
During their discussions at the NewDEAL conference, Alderman stressed the importance of being honest about learning loss.
He noted that while student achievement was generally improving across demographics in the 1990s and 2000s, gaps between high and low achieving students have widened in recent years, with COVID exacerbating pre-pandemic trends.
To compound the issue, he and the other participants in the conversation said many educators and school officials do not have the tools or training to explain to parents the true extent of learning loss.
In addition to recommending that policymakers take a deep dive into the data on what’s happening in their states and communities, they also said local officials should help parents understand where their kids actually stand in terms of their education and empower them to become advocates.
Alderman was also critical of Democrats, arguing the party had remained too quiet in recent years about the importance of education.
“We need to make education cool again,” he advised, advocating for a strong focus on education budgets as well as high-impact interventions, including before and after school programs.
Amundson, a former chair of the Fairfax County School Board in Virginia and former Virginia state delegate, stressed the importance of “high-impact” tutoring to help students make up ground when it comes to learning loss.
All tutoring programs are not the same, she said, stressing that the best of such programs meet the needs of students at times when those students are in a position to learn.
Toward that end the group said policymakers should focus investments on tutoring interventions that include:
Consistent tutoring sessions three times per week.
Well-compensated, high-quality tutors.
Tutoring during the school day or during extended school hours, such as during after-school programs.
Data-driven instruction tailored to the needs of individual students; and
Curriculum aligned to school topics and state standards.
Amundson’s EduTutorVA program works with college students from in and near Virginia, pays tutors competitive salaries, and provides ongoing support for tutors to help them, and their students, succeed.
All of the panelists agreed that while it’s certainly within the power of states and school boards to lay out “incredible” policies, they cautioned those policies will only succeed if there is a budget in place that both aligns with and supports that policy.
With federal pandemic funds running out, Ashley and the other panelists said it is vital that local officials focus ever-scarcer resources on things that work and be ready to make tough decisions, all while closely tracking data of the impact of those decisions on students.
Here they said, state and local leaders must:
Address the ongoing teacher shortage.
Invest in early childhood education programs to help get kids started on the right track, and
Deal with students needs outside of, but still related to, school, such as affordable, stable housing.
It was Mehrota who brought up the topic of chronic absenteeism.
Nationwide, according to a recent analysis, nearly a third of students are chronically absent, defined as missing 10% of instruction time.
At the same time, she said, parents don’t always understand the full impact of so much missed learning time.
Mehrotra advised school districts to do all they can to emphasize the importance of attendance, as well as the negative impacts of absenteeism.
During the discussion, several elected leaders shared examples that help address the issue.
For instance, they noted children who know they have after-school activities, such as sports or after-school clubs, are less likely to be absent.
They also noted that targeted approaches, like task forces, site liaisons, and success mentors can dramatically decrease absenteeism.
