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Education Dive
As new school year approaches, how will districts address the 'COVID slide'?
Prolonged spring closures and uneven distance learning approaches
require preparation for a variety of responses to address learning
loss, administrators say.
Natalie Gross
July 30, 2020
Less than a month after schools across the country transitioned to
online learning in the spring, the internet went wild with posts that
students would have to repeat their current grade levels in the fall.
The idea wasn’t popular with parents — or educators — who were relieved
to find the stories circulating social media were merely a set of bad
April Fool’s jokes rather than a government-mandated strategy to get
students caught up.
In reality, solutions to the so-called “COVID slide” will vary from district to district — and may be much more complicated.
What to expect
“It’s going to be really important to understand the gaps kids have,
the unfinished learning that exists when kids come in,” said Jacob
Bruno, vice president of professional learning at NWEA. The nonprofit
organization recently released a report about COVID-19’s impact on
student achievement.
Based on research of typical summer learning loss and data from the
organization’s 2017-18 MAP Growth assessment, researchers projected
students will return to school with about 70% of learning gains in
reading and less than 50% in math compared to a typical school year.
There are other factors to consider as well, such as students’ social and emotional wellbeing.
“Because the learning loss for kids is going to be so varied — because
the experiences of kids and families will be so varied during this time
by sickness, by job loss, by social isolation — there are a number of
things that certainly we need to take care of and attend to,” Bruno
said.
Assess students early
The key will be to collect data early, the NWEA official said.
“Normally, you might wait a few weeks to kind of have some review with
kids and knock off the cobwebs to attend to summer learning loss before
you do kind of a fall baseline data collection via an interim
assessment or what have you,” he said. “This is kind of like coming
into the emergency room to some degree. As kids come into the
classroom, like, ‘What do you know today?’”
California’s Cajon Valley Unified School District plans to use early
assessment — in addition to the district’s 1:1 ratio for educational
devices — as a key strategy for mitigating COVID-induced learning gaps.
The data will be particularly helpful in meeting the needs of students
who may not have had the same access to summer learning opportunities
as their peers, said Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services
Karen Minshew.
The district has purchased the i-Ready virtual diagnostic tool to
assess where students are in English language arts and math as they
start the school year online, and they will get online school work
responsive to their results, regardless of grade level. The district
will prioritize ELA and math as it did during spring remote learning
while also integrating other subjects, such as history and science,
through writing and reading comprehension.
In El Paso Independent School District in Texas, students will also
take a beginning-of-year assessment, as they do every fall. But the
administration is taking a more active role in how that data will be
used to inform instruction and support students.
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