Students, parents and educators are all still grappling with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, writes our columnist. (Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector)
Four years ago, I sat with my hands resting on this same keyboard. I was frozen and baffled.
On the bulletin board above my desk, I was planning an absurd semester. COVID-19 meant that my students — all enrolled in the same class — would work on a group project, but they would never be in a classroom at the same time. For another class, I would meet in a classroom with more than 100 seats, but often only 10 in-person students.
In the bedroom across the hallway, my daughter was considering the scrambled schedule staring at her from her laptop. If she was in remote school, what were History Office Hours? And how were they different from ELA Live/History Office Hours? Or History Live Hours? And how was this all going to work during 90-minute blocks on Zoom?
In the basement, my son was on his laptop, hacking ways to avoid boredom. He figured out that he could play video games in one window while keeping his Zoom meeting with his teacher open in another. So, at least he was learning new stuff.
Welcome back to the start of the 2020-2021 school year — and its legacy four years later.
We often measure education in four-year increments, especially after students enter high school. Students aim to finish both high school and college in four years, moving from freshman year through senior year.
Sure, the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 obliterated the end of that school year. But, truth be told, we mostly and tamely gave up on April and May. On the other hand, the 2020-2021 academic year was the most ambitious and chaotic school year ever, regardless of whether you lived in Tokyo or Topeka. Four years later, it seems a logical moment to reflect on what happened to our students and forecast what comes next.
My home and work lives have been immersed in thinking, planning and worrying about how the education of young Kansans has been affected. My teaching at the University of Kansas brings students from hundreds of school districts across the country to my lecture hall and classroom. During the lowest points of the pandemic, I led an educational nonprofit aiming to help Kansas student journalists. And the pandemic jostled the education of my children, who are now in high school and college.
Four years later, here are four lessons that I think we, as teachers, should take into this upcoming school year, even if it seems remote from 2020-2021. Warning: it’s going to be a bit bleak here, but I have optimism for you.
The pandemic brought harm
Students in nearly every school district in the state of Kansas saw their math and reading scores drop. Research by the Education Recovery Scorecard shows that in just one year (2022-2023) many students made profound gains immediately after the most disrupted years (2019-2022). However, the study noted that American students “made up only one-third of the pandemic loss in math and one quarter of the loss in reading.”
The gritty teachers who are still in the classroom four years later don’t need studies to convince them of these losses. These teachers tell me that a sophomore in their school today is generally a lesser student than the pre-pandemic sophomore. It’s the same story for almost every grade level.
Given the widespread nature of these learning losses, it’s incredible to find even a single district that managed to keep pace with pre-pandemic scores ( Here’s to you Louisburg school district! ).
The pandemic’s harm was unevenly spread
Only weeks into the pandemic, it was clear that learning losses would be cruelly centered on students and school districts that were already behind.
This January, the Education Recovery Scorecard wrote this about the harm in Kansas: “Despite modest recovery, students in Wichita, Kansas City and Topeka remain more than 80 percent of a grade equivalent behind in math and 60 percent of a grade equivalent behind in reading.”
There were so many causes — almost too many to catalog:
- Urban schools stayed closed for in-person instruction for longer times. Now that we understand how weak remote schooling was as a substitute, it’s clear that urban students suffered by remaining remote.
- More affluent districts were more likely to have parents home to enforce the schedule of remote schooling and help with assignments.
- Many urban schools were unable to track students who simply stopped attending classes — whether in-person or remote — as attendance plummeted.
- Many students living in poverty made the decision to work during the school day rather than attend class. Or, as documented by the New York Times “Odessa” podcast , some students attempted to work a job while attending class on Zoom, listening to the classes on earbuds while working at fast food restaurants.
The flipside is also true. Thriving districts continued to do so. My children were lucky enough to be enrolled in Blue Valley Schools in the Kansas City metro area during the pandemic. While learning losses were steep in their district too, the average student in Blue Valley was two grade levels above grade level in math in 2019 and remained more than a grade level ahead throughout the pandemic.
For college instructors like me, this reality creates a puzzle, especially when teaching first-semester freshmen. Who are we addressing in the seat of our classrooms when we review our syllabi during week one? A student who started high school in jeopardy of not being prepared for college and who was further slowed by the pandemic? Or a student from a high-achieving district who could be two or three grade levels more accomplished in reading or math — or both?
It’s not just the test scores
While the scorecard provides vital data about our nation’s students, teachers know that succeeding in school is much more than reading and math skills.
As I wrote in a previous column , basic attendance habits have dissolved. Trained by the pandemic, students expect all materials — lectures, PowerPoints, assignment descriptions, classroom announcements — to be posted online. Attendance, some students believe, is a bit extra.
Students who dreaded group work before often simply avoid it because they are so anxious to interact with fellow students. Last semester, I talked to one high-achieving student who was frustrated that she was doing all of the work for her in-class writing group.
I sagely coached her, saying: “Try asking a question of your group. And then try to be quiet until someone speaks. It can be hard to wait a minute or maybe two for someone to talk. But eventually, someone will. Social pressure makes it too awkward to be silent.”
“I tried that,” she said. “No one said anything.”
In this way, the pandemic created an educational crisis of soft skills: attendance, teamwork, empathy, compromise, curiosity. These are the traits we should expect of a vibrant employee after college graduation. They are the traits of people we want in our communities.
It’s not just the pandemic
To point these losses solely at the morass created by the pandemic is deceptive. Young people have weathered more even than just a worldwide pandemic that derailed their schools. (And teachers have too.)
The murder of George Floyd and the resulting racial justice protests. The crisis of climate change. The addictive power of smartphones and social media pointed at teens. The threat of school shootings. Add all of that to the “normal” hormonal swirl of being a teenager.
As teachers know, the remedy for students pinned down by these forces is singular. It’s compassion.
Many non-teachers will read that word “compassion” as flimsy. They will read it as caving in to students and making school easier for them.
However, the best teachers know that compassion means caring for two things at once. We must care about what has happened to our students, while also being obsessed with what will happen to these students. In the case of these American students during this upcoming school year, compassion means providing them with challenges.
Students need challenge
One year, for most students, was not enough time to return to pre-pandemic learning levels. The unfortunate truth is that for many school districts it will take years.
The tidy line graphs show it vividly: the annual improvements must continue.
These incremental improvements are the result of millions of small decisions by teachers each school year. Should we tackle another novel during the tight remaining weeks of the semester? Should I assign an extra worksheet — one I didn’t assign last year — on cell division? Should I expect more?
The answer needs to be yes. Challenge, especially right now, equals compassion. We, as teachers, understand what our students can barely handle, what is just beyond their easy grasp.
We can lead them to those challenging lessons. And we must.
For more than 20 years, I’ve been surrounded by Kansas educators — student teachers, professors, teaching assistants, deans and classroom teachers. Watching their grinding work ethic, I find optimism.
If anyone is up for the challenge of providing the next challenge to our Kansas students, it’s them.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here .
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