Playing catch up

To recover from pandemic instruction losses, schools must first teach their students how to learn again

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For many local schools, September marked the first return to normal instruction since March 2020. As the U.S. education system mourns its instructional time losses, it must also grapple with the social and emotional ones.

“Nothing replaces in-person interaction,” said Marathon High School Principal Jamie Coppola. “The teachers and students did the best they could do. But that will never replace the hands-on experience they missed.”

In 2022, the National Center for Education Statistics saw the largest decline in reading assessment scores among 9-year-old students since 1990. It also saw the first ever math assessment score drops in that age group. The social-emotional losses students experienced are harder to quantify.

As they start a new school year, educators have begun exploring their options for recovering from the losses. They’re considering broadening counseling and tutoring, lengthening school days and years and expanding summer school for students in need.

The solution is under debate. The problem is not.

“We’re not going to see a traditional student again for 12 years,” Coppola said.

The great shutdown
On March 12, 2020, Ohio became the first state to close its public schools’ doors and transition to remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. By March 25, all U.S. public schools had closed. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, around 90% of children worldwide were out of school at the pandemic’s peak.

Teachers scrambled to transition to remote learning with just days to adjust their curricula and maintain continuity.

The transition was no easier on students. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two thirds of students had difficulty completing their schoolwork since the start of the pandemic.

Family and home troubles compounded remote learning hardships. The CDC said 28.5% of adolescents experienced parent job loss; 22.3% lost their own job; 23.8% experienced hunger; over half of adolescents experienced emotional abuse by a parent.

In an op-ed for The Atlantic, Thomas Kane, faculty director of Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research, said one fifth of American students whose schools remained remote for the majority of the 2020-21 school year have experienced severe effects. He estimates those schools effectively missed between 13 and 22 weeks of instruction.

Some districts and student groups fared better than others; all lost instructional time. Luann Kida, executive director of Binghamton University Community Schools, a program that leverages university students and resources to supplement Binghamton-area schools, could not say which age group was hit the hardest.

“I think all of them were. We’re noticing it in the schools where I talk to the early readers. First- and second-graders could not learn remotely. And trying to teach remotely to 5-year-olds is impossible,” Kida said. “Another school was just telling us how their seventh-graders are at a fifth-grade level.”

“In middle and high school, where it's content driven, they don’t have the prerequisite knowledge for the Regents,” added Elissa Brown, director of Binghamton University’s Community Schools Regional Network, which expands the community schools’ efforts across Broome County. “Schools and the state are scrambling to figure out how to administer those.”

Losing time
Cortland County educators worry about building on curriculum concepts students do not yet fully grasp.

McGraw schools went remote March 18, 2020; they returned to in-person learning in September 2020 while offering a remote option for sick and apprehensive students. McGraw Central School Superintendent Melinda McCool said teachers and students struggled to balance remote and in-person instruction.

“What we seldom hear about is the lost instruction simply because of the need to review material multiple times for the few that were quarantined or returned later,” McCool said. “The ability to differentiate through quarantine/isolation periods, excessive absences, and unreliable internet service for some of those learning remotely was a difficult task.”

“It is extremely difficult to move on to a new concept without the class mastering the skills needed to continue on,” she added.

“Take the average students, who might have one or two academic gaps or deficiencies. They might now have three or five,” said Marathon’s Coppola.

It’s not just the educational gap, it’s the emotional, too, McCool said. “Schools know that we must focus on the whole child and not simply academics, however there has been a noticeable shift for the increase in need for social-emotional learning in our classrooms.”

McCool, Coppola and other educators believe social and emotional losses must be addressed for students to catch up on academic losses. “We’re trying to deal with getting them into a regular school routine. We need to worry about teaching them to be students again and have social interaction,” Coppola said.

Social-emotional healing
“When districts went to remote learning, there grew two gaps: academic and social-emotional,” said Joe Menard, a SUNY Cortland professor who helps train educators to become principals and superintendents.

Schools across the country must now contend with social-emotional health and development losses, teaching kids how to form and maintain social connections and manage emotions.

According to a Center on Reinventing Public Education study, 30% to 40% of students experienced harm to their social-emotional or mental health during the pandemic. Long-term pandemic social-emotional development losses, especially among children ages 5 to 10, remain largely unknown.

Menard says schools must acknowledge the pandemic’s emotional cost. “I think about my own grandkids. What about birthday parties? These kids missed so many events. How do we recognize that?” Menard said.

Ashley Wirges, Marathon High’s family and consumer sciences teacher, has welcomed the school’s return to normal operation as a chance to mend disconnects and build relationships with students who she met remotely.

“For my 8th graders, it’s usually the first time I meet them. And they were just a little black box on a screen,” Wirges said. “I’m glad I get to have the opportunity to know them now as high schoolers.”

Since many of Wirges’ classes involve hands-on activities like cooking and sewing, she was especially affected by the remote learning transition. “Teaching classes that were so hands-on, it was heartbreaking to not give the students the full experience.”

She sent care packages with sewing materials for projects but found it was no replacement for the real thing. “I tried to give them the same experience at home, but I know not everyone did.”

This fall, Wirges was in high spirits preparing to cook with her students.

As she smiled and bounced around her classroom, she noted students still face social hitches. “Probably the thing they’re struggling with the most is readjusting to be around people,” she said. “Social norms are tricky. And impulse control. Some are struggling.”

“Another thing is a lack of stamina,” Wirges said. “Making it through a whole day in person is definitely tiring a lot of people out. Teachers included.”

The path forward
For some educators, it’s a bit early to consider implementing the more extreme academic interventions, like extending school years and days. “We’re really early for that,” Coppola said.

There are also additional obstacles to pursuing most academic interventions.

“Finance obviously. Staffing. Even now, programs don’t have enough staff. If we expand, you need even more staffing,” Kida said. These are concerns when expanding tutoring, counseling, summer school and school days. “It’s all about staffing and funding and busing. It’s extremely costly.”

She gave the example of a five-week summer program a partner school undertook in which it paid $10,000 to transport students and operate.

“Another barrier would be the impact on families. If the day is expanding, what does that mean for families and their free time? It’s a high consideration,” said Casey Pulz, director of the state Education Department’s technical assistance regional center.

While educators work to figure out academic interventions, some said they must also intervene to give students the tools and support they need to process and overcome the social-emotional obstacles they’ve faced the past two years.

“We truly need to teach differently,” McCool said. “We know that beyond the basic cognitive skills that we typically teach in schools, it is more important than ever that we include interpersonal, digital and self-leadership skills.”

For educators in the Binghamton area, that has meant including social-emotional needs in their classroom. Kida says her partner schools have integrated research on stress and trauma to help students and teachers heal.

“Outside the classroom, we’re partnering with parents and being proactive in trying to reach out to families early on to support them,” Kida said. Additionally, BUCS has helped fill staffing gaps in after-school and summer school programs. The interaction between university and K-12 students is a boon to social-emotional health, she said.

“They’re trying to work on teamwork, and notice signs of early trauma… There’s some innovations in classroom efforts and teaching methods to get kids physically up and moving and keep them engaged,” Brown said.

For others, like Wirges, that might mean ditching the planned curriculum for a day to teach students how to slice, bread and fry a cool giant mushroom a classmate brought in.

“Sometimes it’s not the lesson I planned, but it’s still a great lesson,” she said.