Call it the big reset \u2013 downward \u2013 in public education.<\/p>\n
The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s as if many of the nation’s 50 million public school students have fallen backwards to a time before rigorous standards and accountability mattered very much.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI’m getting concerned that, rather than continuing to do the hard work of addressing learning loss, schools will start to accept a new normal of lower standards,\u201d said Amber Northern, who oversees research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group that advocates for academic rigor in schools.<\/p>\n The question is\u2014why did the windfall of federal funding do so little to help students catch up?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Northern and other researchers, state officials and school leaders interviewed for this article say many districts, facing staffing shortages and a spike in absenteeism, didn\u2019t have the bandwidth to take on the hard work of helping students recover. But other districts, including those that don\u2019t take academic rigor and test scores very seriously, share in the blame. They didn\u2019t see learning loss as a top priority to tackle. It was easier to spend the money on pay rises for staff and upgrading buildings.<\/p>\n The learning loss debacle is the latest chapter in the decade-long decline in public schools. Achievement among black and Latino students on state tests was already dropping before COVID drove an\u00a0exodus<\/a>\u00a0of families away from traditional public schools in search of a better education. Although by lowering standards and lifting the graduation rate districts have created the impression that they have bounced back, experts say that\u2019s the wrong signal to send, creating complacency when urgency is needed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a lot of fatigue among educators in looking at this issue and how to deal with it,\u201d says Karyn Lewis, a research director at assessment group NWEA. \u201cBut if we just accept this as the new normal, it means accepting achievement gaps that have widened exponentially. That is what\u2019s most concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n During COVID all types of students fell behind, partly because of chronic absenteeism of more than 25% that persisted even after they returned to in-person schooling. On average, students fell behind by the equivalent a half year’s worth of learning in math and a bit less in reading, while those in high poverty cities like St. Louis regressed three times that much, according to a joint Harvard-Stanford\u00a0study<\/a>. Reading scores in 2022-23\u00a0resembled<\/a>\u00a0those of the 1970s, before the era of school accountability.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s alarming to us that the academic growth in 2022-23 was actually more sluggish than the previous year,\u201d said Lewis, co-author of the study. \u201cThe students are missing those building blocks in their skills that allow them to understand grade level content.\u201d<\/p>\n The consequences for students with learning loss could be serious, affecting everything from lifetime earnings to incarceration rates. In a paper co-authored by Harvard\u2019s Thomas Kane, researchers\u00a0estimate<\/a>\u00a0that K-12 students on average face a drop in lifetime earnings of almost 2 percent, totaling $900 billion.<\/p>\n As learning declined, so did academic standards. More than 40 states eased requirements beginning with the class of 2020, according to a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Education Week<\/em>. Graduation tests and required courses were eliminated, and the number of credits needed to graduate was reduced. Schools also backed off on standard grading with credit-no credit scores, limits on low grades and more.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a high schooler during COVID who was told that she just needed to show up to class and turn in assignments that were less intense than before,\u201d said Douglas Harris, a Tulane professor who focuses on the economics of education. Open-book tests “made it easy to get good grades,” he said. “It required almost no effort to pass classes.\u201d<\/p>\n Researchers say the problem is that districts were given almost free rein in how they spent the money with little accountability. For example, the final batch of ESSER funding approved in March 2021 only required that at least 20 percent of the funds be spent on learning loss. That percentage, set by Democrats in Congress, seems remarkably low given that researchers had revealed five months earlier, in November 2020, that a significant learning\u00a0deficit<\/a>, particularly in math, had already set in nationwide.<\/p>\n No one knows exactly how districts have been spending the money. State officials are supposed to oversee and report on their districts\u2019 spending. But like other COVID spending programs that have been plagued by fraud and waste, ESSER reporting rules are vague. As many as 20 states either don\u2019t know, or haven\u2019t revealed, how their districts spent the money beyond the total amount deployed, says Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown\u2019s Edunomics Lab.<\/p>\n Roza says that while reversing learning loss is a priority in some districts, in others it isn\u2019t. Some school leaders simply aren\u2019t worried about plunging test scores of their students, reflecting today\u2019s dismissive view of high academic standards and accountability.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has become very fashionable to poo-poo state assessments and student outcomes as not being valuable,\u201d Roza said. \u201cSome districts might not even track how big a hit their students took. That\u2019s the mood right now in some states.\u201d<\/p>\n Education Secretary Miguel Cardona\u00a0called on<\/a>\u00a0districts to devote ESSER funding to pay raises for teachers to address staffing shortages in some parts of the country, a position also\u00a0promoted<\/a>\u00a0by the National Education Association, the large teachers\u2019 union that\u00a0supports<\/a>\u00a0President Joe Biden\u2019s re-election bid.<\/p>\n \u201cIf districts are doing across the board pay rises, including for senior teachers, I don\u2019t know if students suffering learning loss are getting much value out of that,\u201d Roza said.<\/p>\n A widespread problem is that most of the programs have been voluntary and held after school or in summer. Although this approach is easier for schools because classroom space is available and the sessions don\u2019t disrupt the daily schedule, the downside is that most kids who need extra help don\u2019t show up, reflecting the continuing crisis in classroom absenteeism.<\/p>\n Parents haven\u2019t been much help. Most of them are not getting the message about the dive in test scores or just don\u2019t care, according to a University of Southern California\u00a0study<\/a>. Parents focus on grades, and today\u2019s inflated scores may give them the impression that their kids are doing fine and don\u2019t need to attend recovery programs.<\/p>\n The low turnout in Connecticut\u2019s Waterbury School District, with many of its 19,000 students from low-income families, is typical of programs across the country. Only 551 high school students took part in the Waterbury summer learning program.<\/p>\n \u201cI consider this to be low,\u201d says Tom Van Stone, a Waterbury school commissioner. \u201cOur everyday learners are really suffering. I don\u2019t know if they will ever catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n A decade ago, public schools in Chicago, in collaboration with the University of Chicago Education Lab, rolled out high dosage tutoring for ninth grade math in 12 high schools. Some 2,000 students received small group tutoring in an elective class during the school day. Researchers found that they learned twice as much math over the course of a year compared with their peers who didn\u2019t receive the extra help. The results were replicated the following year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw really impressive gains,\u201d said Monica Bhatt, senior research director at the university lab. \u201cIt was very heartening.\u201d<\/p>\n When the pandemic hit, the Chicago school district eagerly expanded the program to 200 schools and hire 800 tutors with the help of $50 million in ESSER funding.<\/p>\n For high-dosage tutoring to be effective, administrators and teachers must be willing to put in the hard work to change business as usual. The daily schedule must be revamped to accommodate a fleet of newly hired tutors and find classrooms to add hundreds of tutoring sessions. Teachers and tutors have to coordinate instruction and track progress of students.<\/p>\n But so far, high dosage tutoring hasn\u2019t caught on nationwide. In the wake of the pandemic, only 2 percent to 10 percent of students received it, said USC\u2019s Amie Rapaport, adding that the number should be \u201csignificantly higher\u201d given all the ESSER money districts received.<\/p>\n University of Chicago researchers say some schools lack the will to make the big changes that the practice requires. Inertia is a powerful force.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen schools are faced with the possibility of change, they tend to do fewer of the hard things that will help students and more of the easier things that are likely to have fewer learning benefits for children,\u201d\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0Chicago\u2019s Jonathan Guryan and Jens Ludwig.<\/p>\n Lowering the bar: Most states now offer flexibility for high school graduation.\u00a0<\/strong>See\u00a0interactive map<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe Depths of Learning Loss<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/63\/639287_5_.png\" "\\"Math")
<\/div>\nA Gusher of Federal Funding<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"ESSER](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/63\/639196_5_.png\" "\\"Caption\\"")
<\/div>\nLearning Loss Programs Flop<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Intensive Tutoring Gets Results<\/strong><\/h3>\n
A New Normal in Academic Standards<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Education](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/63\/639193_5_.png\" "\\"Lower")
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