The findings stand in stark contrast to older elementary-school students, who appeared to show accelerated growth and were making up for lost learning over time, and have prompted concerns over the enduring impact of disrupted foundational years.

“We were shocked when we first saw the data. The toll that the pandemic took on these young learners is striking, and we need to pay more attention and prioritize them,” says Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates.

“The data show that these students – these second-graders who were in preschool or were just toddlers during the pandemic – their learning was disrupted and now they are having a harder time recovering and, in some cases, are falling even further behind.” 

The Curriculum Associates report focused on how students who entered kindergarten through fourth grade in the fall of 2021 performed in math and reading over three years, and compared those scores against students who started prior to the pandemic. In doing so, researchers analyzed results from roughly 4 million students. The dataset is unique in that it includes younger children who don’t yet participate in federally-mandated state testing or the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which accounts for why most academic achievement data focuses on older grades. 

While the researchers found that younger students were either falling behind or consistently hovering below pre-pandemic levels in both subjects, they were most challenged by math. Students who were in second and third grade during the 2021-22 school year had bottomed out in their recovery, hovering below pre-pandemic achievement levels. Meanwhile, students who were in kindergarten or first grade at that time had been dropping further below historical trends. 

Even the younger students who were on grade level prior to the pandemic – a subgroup that generally showed less learning loss and quicker recovery times, including for the younger students in reading – were lagging significantly behind. And notably, they made less progress compared to their pre-pandemic peers regardless of whether they attended urban, suburban or rural schools. 

The same is not true of older elementary-school students in reading or math. Students who were in fourth grade during the 2021-22 school year, for example, were hitting pre-pandemic levels in reading and approaching them in math three years later in the spring of 2024.

Why younger students may be struggling 

“Our data don’t speak to the why,” Huff said. “But they do suggest that somewhere along the way these [younger] students did not pick up the foundational skills, the building blocks for reading and math – and especially math – that are crucial for their learning trajectory.”

Though the study was designed to show correlation and not causation, Huff and her team have a handful of working theories.

The pandemic in increasing enrollment in public preschools and kick-started a chronic absenteeism problem that continues today. Given that so many students missed out on pre-K or kindergarten – or received instruction virtually during those years – they may have missed a critical window of learning and development. And, research has long shown, less developed foundational skills can lead to the types of learning gaps the researchers found. 

Research also shows that certain moments in a child’s development are more sensitive to change than others. Children undergo between birth and age five, for example, but it can be . The pandemic was a once-in-a-lifetime disruption. 

“For student learning, periods during which students build foundational skills – the skills most needed to advance learning – may be especially sensitive,” the researchers noted in their published findings. “Thus, disruptions during foundational skill development could create a compounding effect, making recovery a slow endeavor.”

Alongside that hypothesis is another: that the academic recovery efforts used by districts targeted students who were either further along in elementary school, or in middle and high school, or in grades participating in state exams. If that was the case, younger learners may have received less intervention support.

Of course, that’s virtually impossible to track given that districts allocated their state and federal pandemic recovery spending based on needs – staffing, tutoring, summer learning, social-emotional development, etc. – and not by grade-level. 

‘Math is a whole different story’

Angie Rosen, the director of curriculum and instruction at Little Silver Boro School District in New Jersey, says she knew right away that the small, high-performing school district had a problem when they brought back kindergarten and first grade students in November 2021. 

“Reading is one thing. Parents can read with kids. But math is a whole different story,” she says. “It’s more about understanding number sense, manipulating numbers and understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing.”

To blunt the pandemic’s impact, Rosen organized intense professional development for math instruction for first and second grade teachers. 

“We knew that parents wouldn’t teach math like we were teaching math, so that’s where we started,” she says. “We worked hard at it.”

Rosen says the key to getting their students back on track has been to obsess over their benchmark data to figure out where students have stopped making recovery and plug those holes.

“You have to look at where the gaps are, look at where it’s not measuring up, and then target it and address it,” she says. “You can’t do every grade level and every year in every subject. But I think that’s our success – we pay attention to the data and use it.”

To be sure, the Curriculum Associate data is the first of its kind to suggest that the county’s youngest learners are uniquely stalled out and, in some cases, falling further behind. Some researchers caution that the doomsday finding hasn’t been replicated by other robust analyses of post-pandemic academic loss and recovery – though that’s due to the fact that standardized testing data does not exist for such young students. 

Researchers from Curriculum Associates acknowledge at least some limitations to their methodology and findings, including that despite the large sample size, the data is not nationally representative, they did not use matched samples and did not track the same students pre- and post-pandemic. 

Huff says the data should be a shot across the bow for school districts to invest more recovery resources on their youngest learners.

“We now know their growth trajectory is very much dependent upon how prepared they were when they come into school,” she says. “We want these data to inform helpful, targeted policies and practice. These are data based on millions of students and we know that there are educators, districts and students out there who are bucking the trend.”

The United States has a math crisis—and it’s not just the students. It extends to those choosing how to spend federal pandemic relief dollars. Even when they choose the best prescriptions to make up for the pandemic’s learning losses, they are using the wrong dosage. It’s a multiplication problem.

The average student in the U.S. lost the equivalent of half a year of math instruction and a quarter of a year in reading. Many urban school districts that were closed for much of 2020-21, such as St. Louis and New Haven, lost one and a half years, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s start with the national average of half a year.

Let’s complete a math exercise together, focusing on four interventions proven to help students catch up: high-dosage tutoring, an extra period of math instruction, six weeks of summer school, and an extended school year. Pre-pandemic research suggests that the first three types of interventions generate the equivalent of one year, half a year, and a quarter of the typical year’s growth in math, respectively. Let’s assume that students receive the same amount of instruction in each additional week of school as they do during the school year. As illustrated by the chart, if 10% of students in any given district received “high-impact” tutoring, 30% received double periods of math, 75% attended summer school, and 100% went to school for two and a half weeks longer, they would recover half a year of learning.

Challenging? Yes. But doable.

Inadequate responses

Unfortunately, I know of no district coming close to this level of intervention. Nationally, only 2% of students are receiving high-impact tutoring, where they are receiving about three hours a week of tutoring for 36 weeks, or about 108 hours total. Most districts are providing only 15-20 hours and only for a small percentage of students, nowhere near the 10% in my catch-up assumption.

Summer school attendance has been 15% or 20% in many urban districts, light years behind my assumed 75%.

I don’t have national data on the percentage of students receiving double doses of math, but I’m confident it is nowhere near 30%.

Further, very few school districts have extended their school year. The struggle in Richmond, Virginia illustrates the challenge. According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, students in third through eighth grade lost the equivalent of one and a half years of math and reading achievement between 2019 and 2022, more than any other district in Virginia. Starting in the spring of 2021, while schools were still closed, Superintendent Jason Kamras proposed a year-round calendar to help students catch up. Students would have one month off in the summer and four two-week breaks during the school year. Most students would still have 180 school days a year, but the district would select 5,000 students to receive up to 40 days of extra instruction during the breaks. His school board turned him down. Instead, they allowed him to pilot a longer school year in just two of the city’s 54 schools. The two schools started this summer, and student attendance has been strong.

Leadership counts

As illustrated in Richmond, part of the challenge has been the absence of political leadership. To undertake the major reforms that would be required to help students catch up, school district leaders need political air cover.

As a U.S. senator, Lamar Alexander helped push through the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2015, which defined the federal role in K-12 education, returning significant power to the states. But states have largely declined the opportunity to lead, and the education reform effort in the U.S. has been rudderless. We’re a long way from the era when governors such as Bill Clinton (Arkansas), Jim Hunt (North Carolina), brothers George W. Bush (Texas) and Jeb Bush (Florida), as well as Alexander himself (who then led Tennessee) used a combination of the bully pulpit, funding, and policies to push an unprecedented wave of state-led reforms in the 1980s and 1990s.

Only recently have leaders such as Governor Jared Polis in Colorado and Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia begun to make improving students’ outcomes a centerpiece of their agendas, and not just a stage for culture wars.

There are some modest bright spots. Under Commissioner of Education Mike Morath’s leadership, Texas required districts to provide an additional 30 hours a week of small-group instruction to students in the lowest achievement category. It’s unlikely to be enough for many students, but it’s a lot more than what other states are providing.

Many states, such as Tennessee and Colorado, have launched tutoring initiatives—again, a laudable move—but none of these programs have the dosage levels that will produce a meaningful impact.

The federal government provided billions of additional dollars of pandemic-related support. When the American Rescue Plan passed in March of 2021, no one knew how large the achievement losses would be. And, wanting to preserve district flexibility, Congress only required districts to spend 20% of the money on academic catch-up (with a loose definition of what could count). The result was predictable. Much of the funding has gone to salary increases, HVAC systems, or additional school counselors. In the worst cases, states have allowed communities to use the federal funds to replace local tax revenues—a shell game that will help exactly zero children. In the end, only a small share of federal aid has been used to replace what students lost during the pandemic: instructional time.

Looking ahead

With a legal deadline to commit the funds by September 2024, school districts have one more year to spend their federal relief dollars. Given that budgets have been set and the 2023-24 school year is about to begin, it will be difficult for districts to scale up their plans for the coming school year. However, there is still time for districts to plan a major scale-up of summer learning for the summer of 2024. There’s even some hope of continuing the effort beyond next summer. Although the American Rescue Plan law requires districts to commit the funds by next September, the federal Department of Education has the authority to allow districts to spend down those funds over the following year (the legal term is “liquidate”), as long as the contracts are signed and the funds are obligated by the deadline. The Biden administration should prioritize extending the spending deadline for programs that increase students’ instructional time—tutoring programs, summer learning, after-school programs, school vacation academies, and salary increases associated with an extended school year.

Although there’s still hope that districts will help younger students catch up, we cannot forget that four high school graduating classes—roughly 12 million students—have already started their postsecondary careers. The data suggest it’s been a rough start. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, community college enrollment declined by a staggering 20% between spring 2019 and spring 2023. The number of students seeking bachelor’s degrees at public and private colleges declined by 6%.

We know remarkably little about what has driven the declines in postsecondary enrollment. Many have speculated that the hot labor market was to blame. However, there’s little concrete evidence to confirm this. It is also possible that the decline was connected to the learning losses in K-12. For instance, especially in areas that spent much of the 2020-21 school year in remote instruction, the high school graduating classes of 2020 and 2021 would have had a hard time meeting with their college counselors to explore their postsecondary options and get help with financial aid.

Moreover, students who fell behind in math or reading in eighth through 10th grades may not have had time to complete the advanced high school coursework expected of many science and engineering majors. According to the College Board, the number of students taking Advanced Placement exams in biology and calculus (both AB and BC) fell by 9% and 12%, respectively, while the number of students taking the chemistry exam declined by 21%. Even if college enrollment rates recover, such trends do not bode well for what may happen to the number of college students pursuing STEM degrees in the coming years.

State leadership need

To resolve this question, we need more research on the relationship between achievement losses, school closures, and changes in postsecondary enrollment by high school. The answer is of more than academic interest as the pace of recovery in the postsecondary sector may well depend on recovery in elementary and secondary schools.

Because many students will not have caught up by the time the federal relief dollars are spent, we must begin discussing additional policies to continue the recovery following September 2024. Anything requiring a school board vote or state legislative action will take time to enact.

For one, states and cities should set aside resources for reaching out to recent high school graduates who never enrolled in college and offer assistance in exploring postsecondary options and applying for federal financial aid. It would be foolish to allow them to fall through the cracks, as the nation’s future workforce needs will depend on their continued training and development.

In addition, states should ensure that future graduating classes have what they need before leaving high school. For instance, students who do not achieve proficiency on state tests at the end of eighth grade should receive additional help during ninth grade to ensure that they are on track for college and a career. States might consider offering students the option of a fifth year in high school or free tuition for their first year in community college, giving them a chance to fill in gaps in coursework they missed in high school as a result of pandemic achievement losses.

The academic recovery effort following the pandemic has been undersized from the beginning. Although the research community and federal and state regulators encouraged districts to focus on “evidence-based” solutions such as high-dosage tutoring and summer learning, districts were never given clear guidance on the dosages required or the share of students they should be serving. Moreover, the guidance that was provided—specifically, the 20% minimum spending on “academic recovery”—was downright misleading.

The future consequence for students—and for the nation’s economy—if students fail to catch up will be dire. A conservative estimate of the loss in future earnings for those enrolled in public K-12 education during the 2020-21 school year is $900 billion. As the federal relief dollars are spent down, state and local leaders must step up. Today, there are two or three candidates seeking the mantle of “education governor.” We need 50 of them.

July, 2024 Update: I wrote this essay late last summer, while the evidence was at its bleakest: districts were struggling to implement recovery efforts and researchers were reporting disappointing results for specific recovery efforts. Subsequently, the prospects of recovery brightened somewhat. In January 2024, our Harvard/Stanford team of researchers . In June 2024, we . We found that the federal relief did have an impact on the recovery. Even though the impact per dollar spent was much smaller than if the funding had been spent solely on tutoring or learning, the estimated impact was nevertheless in line with pre-pandemic research on the effect of general revenue increases. The projected earnings impact from the improvement was sufficient to justify the expenditure.

ESSER relief was like the first stage of a rocket: powerful, but unfocused and likely insufficient to get us all the way back to 2019 levels of achievement. After the 2024 NAEP is released in January 2025, we expect to update the Education Recovery Scorecard with district recovery through 2024. Soon after, we expect to write a second report on the impact of ESSER spending during 2023-24. We hope we are wrong, but our results thus far imply that many districts will remain behind 2019 levels when the federal money runs out. 

It is alarming, then, that so many states have not even begun to discuss what they will do to continue the recovery after September 2024. Rather than provide additional general revenue as with ESSER, we hope states consider targeting aid at specific evidence-based solutions, such as tutoring or summer learning, especially in the districts which will remain behind. Otherwise, we will be forcing children to pay the price for the pandemic.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

As I look at the impact of the pandemic on adolescents, two very different sets of data stand out. First, we have seen huge declines in teenagers’ mental health. In October 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health, pointing to soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts. In March 2022, the Centers for Disease Control that more than 40 percent teenagers are “persistently sad or lonely;” a follow-up in February 2023 found that number rises to 57% among teenage girls. 

Meanwhile, and are up. In addition, an estimated 22% of students have been (missing more than 10% of school) since the pandemic, while one to two million students have not returned to school at all, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Not surprisingly, the situation is worse for students who have been historically marginalized and underserved. 

Second, and much more encouragingly, we have seen a huge surge in international interest in social and emotional learning (SEL), which supports students’ academic achievement and mental wellness, according to an extensive . While some U.S. politicians play politics with this issue, restricting what can be taught in American classrooms, other nations are coming to us for advice on the practices and policies that will help advance their students’ overall wellbeing. Indeed, countries such as Australia, Israel, Portugal, and Spain are making SEL a national priority. 

Strong business, family and educator support

Fortunately, a growing number of U.S. corporate leaders also get it. They tell us repeatedly that, while they can find employees with the right technical skills, many of these potential hires lack the key social and emotional skills that will help them thrive as team players in the workplace. Indeed, of surveyed executives say skills such as problemsolving and communicating clearly are equally or more important than technical skills. One corporate leader told me his response to policymakers in a state that is eliminating culturally responsive teaching and other SEL-related efforts: “If you don’t want SEL in your schools, you don’t want my business in your state.” 

The business support is not surprising, given the close alignment between employability skills and the : self-awareness (understanding one’s strengths and weaknesses); selfmanagement (including organizational skills, self-discipline, initiative); social awareness (listening, empathy, understanding others’ perspectives); relationship-building (communications, resolving conflict, teamwork); and responsible decision-making (problem-solving, analyzing the pros and cons of various choices).

Although we have heard some divisive narratives in media and politics, the data shows that the vast majority of students, families, and educators strongly support SEL: say it’s at least somewhat important to them that their children’s schools teach them to develop these life skills. Further, say they emphasize SEL in the classroom, 83% say it improves academic outcomes, and 84% say it boosts skills like collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. 

What schools are doing

Educators are building on this strong support—not just to recover from the pandemic but to redesign education. Optimally, they’re taking a systems approach to SEL, teaching it not just as a one-off course in sixth period, but instead integrating it into everything they do. They are strengthening school culture and climate by prioritizing the relationships among students and between students and adults (from teachers to custodians). They are focusing on the well-being of staff, who have suffered as well. They are integrating SEL with academics, so that students are learning teamwork during math class discussions and better understanding various perspectives when studying everything from the American Revolution to Shakespeare, among many examples. 

For example, , serving high school students in the Pilsen community of Chicago, has committed to prioritizing both student and adult SEL and well-being. They’ve implemented a competency-based instructional model that gives staff time not only to focus on the academic progress of students but also their social and emotional development. Students have the opportunity to put their SEL into practice when they share insights and perspectives through student committees. The school has also used staff-wide professional learning time to focus on adult SEL, and partnered with families to create a series of parent and caregiver discussions on SEL.

Going forward, we should continue discussing academic loss, but we must also talk about the impact of relationship loss. This is true for all grades, but is particularly important now in high schools, where students’ perception of teacher connection has declined to a new low, according to a survey by the nonprofit YouthTruth: less than a quarter of students say their teachers try to understand their lives outside of school, and less than half say there’s an adult at school who they can talk to when they’re having problems or feeling upset and stressed. 

Unless we strengthen relationships, we won’t close the learning gaps. SEL is not a distraction from academics, but a tool that can help us build relationships so we can get to academic recovery and success. Hundreds of independent studies confirm that SEL positively impacts academic achievement. And recent found that fostering ninth graders’ social and emotional development had a nearly identical impact on their academics as focusing specifically Taking a systems approach to SEL, teaching it not just as a one-off course in sixth period, but instead integrating it into everything they do. THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN STUDENT: FALL 2023 on test-score growth did. When students have social and emotional skills paired with positive relationships that make them feel like part of a community, they want to come to school and learn.

Schools also are strengthening their partnerships with parents and families, a natural outcome of families being more actively engaged in their children’s day-to-day learning during the pandemic. I experienced these challenges firsthand during the past two years, helping my middle schooler and eight-year-old navigate a changing world increasingly powered by digital media. And here comes artificial intelligence—the challenge of separating fact from fiction, good from bad, and making good choices just got a lot harder. Parents and teachers must help educate the next generation for digital citizenship.

Policymakers also have an important role to play. Out of the media glare, strong bipartisan support continues for evidence-based efforts to strengthen students’ well-being—socially, emotionally, and academically. in SEL as part of COVID recovery efforts, and 27 states across the country have adopted SEL standards or competencies to guide pre-K-12 instruction. At the federal level, SEL is being embedded into key legislation, from the federal American Rescue Plan to the Safer Communities Act and bills addressing everything from mental health to opioid addiction. The long-term outcome: more students will succeed not only in school, but at work and in life as well. 

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are likely to be profound and long-lasting. We have already seen substantial short-term effects on young people’s educational experiences, particularly for those from less advantaged backgrounds. It is vital that we fully understand these impacts, including the burden on ethnic minorities and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Amid the pandemic, a team across UCL and the Sutton Trust (a think tank with 25 years’ experience researching social mobility), established the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities study (COSMO for short) to play this vital role for England. Our aim is to build the evidence base to understand the pandemic’s long-term effects on educational and career trajectories.

The study focuses on the experiences of a cohort of young people (those aged 14–15 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic) for whom the disruption had a particularly acute impact at a crucial moment in their educations—with minimal time for catch-up before graduating from secondary school. In addition, this group’s national age-16 examinations (known as GCSEs) were replaced with purely teacher-assessed grades, throwing their usual post-16 transition into further uncertainty.

COSMO has recruited a representative sample of over 13,000 young people in 500 schools across England, over-sampling disadvantaged and ethnic minority groups and targeting other hard-to-reach groups. Young person and parent questionnaires—enhanced with educational administrative data—have collected rich data on young people’s experiences of education and well-being in the aftermath of the pandemic, along with information on their post-16 education transitions. Key findings include:

Young people’s educational experiences during Covid-19 lockdowns varied considerably.

To take one example, we looked at live online lessons, perhaps emblematic of schooling during this period—but certainly not experienced universally. In the early pandemic, the most dramatic differences were between the state and private sectors. State schools with more advantaged students caught up with the amount of live online lessons provided by private schools in the early 2021 lockdown. But schools with poorer students continued to lag, likely because they were tackling important welfare needs.

Young people from less advantaged homes were more likely to report barriers to learning at home.

They were less likely to have a quiet space to focus on learning and more likely to use a mobile device or to share devices to carry out online activities. We also confirmed that those affected by these issues did indeed report spending less time on schoolwork during lockdowns.

The impacts on learning are widespread—and recognized.

Four in five young people told us that their educational progress suffered due to the pandemic. Almost half said that they had not caught up with the learning they lost. Over a third felt they had fallen behind their classmates. This rises to almost half for those who attended schools with the most disadvantaged students.

Efforts to help students catch up have not reached as many as we might hope.

This is perhaps unsurprising given that England’s catch-up spending plans were estimated to be worth around £310 per pupil, vs. £1,830 in the United States. Almost half of young people in the cohort reported that they had received no specific catch-up learning at all. Despite the efforts of the government’s National Tutoring Programme, which aimed to put one-on-one and small group tutoring at the heart of catch-up plans, only 27% of the sample reported receiving this type of assistance.

On a more positive note, there is encouraging evidence that those who did receive small group tutoring were more likely to be from less advantaged backgrounds.

Those who took up tutoring also performed better in their teacher-assessed age-16 examinations, compared to similar individuals who were offered tutoring but did not take it.

We are not the only study across the world aiming to track the long-term implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for young people’s life chances. For example, Generations, led by the Australian National University, is taking a similar approach to ours, tailored to their own context. Other researchers likely are working with similar aims, again with variations depending upon differences in their national contexts and education systems.

Hopefully, we are only at the start of the journey for COSMO. We plan to follow young people as they continue their transition into adult lives, checking in every couple of years or so. This builds on the UK’s existing cohort studies, some of which are now following their members into retirement. About half of our cohort will make this transition via university, starting in autumn 2023. We will seek to learn about their academic preparation for higher education and how they are managing financially against a difficult economic backdrop, among other priorities. Our longer-term follow-ups will focus on experiences in the labor market, family formation, and all other aspects of adult life. Crucially, our research will allow us to understand how these experiences differ depending upon their experiences of the pandemic—and how this has mediated preexisting inequalities.

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Tutoring—an old education practice that historically was only available to affluent kids—raced to the forefront of public consciousness in the last two years as a way to catch all kids up after the pandemic’s learning disruptions.

There’s strong evidence behind an intervention now called “high-impact tutoring,” defined as individualized or small- group instruction during the school day, in alignment with core curriculum, for a substantial amount of time, several days a week, with a built-in mechanism for monitoring student progress. This kind of tutoring is delivering real results for students, especially when led by teachers or paraprofessionals, for students in the earliest grades, and for programs conducted in school (see sidebar on page 43).

The challenge is that high-impact tutoring is difficult to deliver at the scale and the pace that we need. Generous estimates suggest only about 1 in 10 of all U.S. students are getting effective tutoring support, while the real number is likely even lower. It is also especially difficult to reach high school students, who arguably should be our top priority given how little time they have to recover pandemic learning losses before graduation.

But there’s reason for optimism: a growing number of tutoring providers are innovating new models, conducting research, and delivering results.

Overcoming Implementation Hurdles

For districts committed to developing their own programs, it is difficult to find and train qualified tutors; ensure the curricula are aligned; coordinate the communications between tutors and classroom teachers; and manage the program overall, especially in systems that already are stretched thin. Meanwhile, districts seeking to partner with providers have trouble finding those with both a strong evidence base and the capacity to reach all the kids in

the district who could benefit—often thousands or tens of thousands. Historically, providers that offer tutoring at scale are essentially providing 24/7 homework help, which is not the same as high-impact tutoring.

Indeed, scaling quality programs is the biggest challenge, and the millions of students who are behind today can’t wait decades for us to get it right. In order to solve it, we need to figure out how to get more tutors into schools, how to align tutoring curricula with core curricula, how to help districts solve school-day scheduling challenges, and how to ensure costs are sustainable.

That’s why we started Accelerate, a nonprofit determined to make high-impact tutoring a standard feature of American schools by:

• Identifying and funding innovative, scalable tutoring models, including those that use technology and AI to reach more students.
• Funding rigorous evaluations of these models to gauge effectiveness of the programs.
• Supporting state departments of education in creating regulatory frameworks to encourage effective in-school tutoring. This could include creating preferred provider lists, statewide procurement for strong tutoring providers, and mandatory statewide data collection and analysis of tutoring in schools.
  

Our ultimate goal is to embed tutoring into the regular school day, which is the most effective way to ensure all students from every background get the individualized support they need.

Successful Innovations At All Levels, Including High School

Saga Education’s longstanding math tutoring partnership with Chicago Public Schools provides a great example of what is possible. Saga offers tutoring as part of a credit- bearing class, and the school system recognizes that tutoring offers as much or more value than the classes it replaces. The research supports this choice: A randomized control trial of 2,633 ninth and tenth graders, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2021, found the program improved students’ math test scores and grades in math and non-math courses.

Early literacy is a priority, too, and scaling tutoring in early literacy has great potential. On Your Mark, an Accelerate grantee, offers synchronous tutoring via computer using high-quality instruction materials based on the science of reading. Using noise-canceling headphones, students get extra doses of phonics and other instruction without leaving their desks. In California, Accelerate is supporting Amira, a company that equips high school and college students with a AI-powered platform to tutor younger students in foundational literacy.

Impact of AI

Tutoring models that use artificial intelligence are already here, and within a year or two we expect AI to become a useful tool to support—not replace—skilled educators in giving tutors feedback and helping to pinpoint individual students’ learning gaps. Before now, it was difficult and costly to have supervisors watch tutoring sessions and provide feedback to tutors. But video and transcript crawls via AI could mean a significant improvement in the quality of feedback to tutors. Groups like Schoolhouse, Carnegie Mellon, and Saga are already working on AI models for giving tutors feedback.

To address learning gaps, AI-enabled technologies can
help tutors triangulate what students are learning in core classroom instruction, where an individual student has learning gaps, and what an appropriate tutoring intervention looks like. AI could dramatically reduce tutors’ prep time for individual tutoring sessions, and lower the cost for school districts.

The high cost of tutoring is a key barrier for many school districts, and it’s why Accelerate is also funding five states (Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana, and Ohio) that have embraced tutoring as a statewide priority, in the hopes that they will become models for other states to follow. Over the 2023-2024 school year, Accelerate will support each of these states in implementing evidence-based tutoring programs statewide, measuring their impacts on student outcomes, and develop plans for long-term sustainability.

States across the country are making strides toward ensuring all students have access to high-impact tutoring during the school day. There are so many reasons to be hopeful that this intervention can permanently change the American school system.

If anything keeps me up at night, it is the concern that the education field, in our eagerness to move on to the next big thing—especially when federal Covid-19 relief funding runs out—will give up on tutoring before it has a chance to scale up and deliver the kinds of results we all want. The key is to respond quickly to what works, and treat tutoring as an evidence-based, long-term solution. Tutoring is not a post-pandemic extra, but an evergreen must-have that should be a central part of today’s American school day.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

The researchers found these schools, five out of six with high numbers of students of color and those on free and reduced-price lunch, asking how to offer students multiple pathways to postsecondary success, beyond just college, without lowering academic rigor or expectations. Chosen because they had a track record of innovation, the schools were questioning whether the accommodations given to students during the throes of remote learning or right after the return to in-person instruction were still serving them well.

In doing so, they are expanding their visions of success and reimagining their purpose, a move which researchers note could mark a departure from past understandings of schooling. They titled their study “A ‘Good Life’ for Every Student.”

“We saw high schools starting to adjust the goal posts, where they were taking on more responsibility for student success in the long run,” said Chelsea Waite, senior researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University.

Between April 2022 and November 2023, Waite and her partner, Maddy Sims, from Columbia University’s Center for Public Research and Leadership, did 266 interviews with current high school students, graduates, parents, teachers and school administrators. Of the six schools, including some in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, four were traditional public and two were charter schools. 

Two were alternative programs for students who are overage and undercredited, pregnant or parenting or have a history of chronic absenteeism. These students, administrators said, would have once been considered a success if they just reached graduation. Three other schools were focused on increasing access to Advanced Placement and other rigorous academic courses and to “Early College Experience” offerings.

Participating students and families identified three major priorities for post-high school futures: happiness, fulfillment and stability. For some, this included college. For others, it meant immediately entering the workforce. The concept of a “happy life” included financial security, but no one interviewed said salary was the main determinant of success.

These schools were not just trying to get students across the finish line to graduation and then directly to college, Waite said. Instead they were asking “What are students’ individualized understandings of who they want to be as adults and what they want to be in the world?” And “How can we set them up with a corresponding, individualized plan that can help them on that path to a good life?”

Each of the six schools prioritized students graduating with a “good plan” in place, but educators also acknowledged that “there really hadn’t been full alignment on what constitutes or what defines a ‘good plan’ in practice,” said Sims.

Looking to provide roadmaps for other high schools, researchers asked what success means to school communities, especially for students who have been historically marginalized; what solutions schools were exploring to help all students achieve; and what obstacles they were facing in this attempt. 

Challenges they observed across schools:

• Educators’ concerns that increasing flexibility could decrease rigor
• Desire to give students room to define their own paths to success without perpetuating historical “opportunity gaps”
• Overreliance on traditional data (such as test scores or graduation rates), despite recognizing that these are insufficient to meaningfully track success

 Examples of innovations they observed schools introducing to ensure students were academically engaged and supported:

• Shifts to interdisciplinary units and coursework. For example, in one school students were learning about marketing, social science, financial literacy and ratios in a multi-week course on the loan industry. One administrator said, “I think we can do a much better job of trapping kids in the honey of each content area. To be a writer is such a powerful thing. To be a scientist is such a powerful thing.”
• AP courses and “Early College Experience” courses, which partner with local colleges and universities
• Shift in grading towards “grading for equity” practices that focus on measuring what students know rather than how they behave
• Moving toward using the classroom as a space of exploration of identity and student-driven learning. One school allowed students to build credit-bearing “personalized learning experiences,” essentially independent studies with an advisor
• Individualized mentoring and counseling. For example, two schools used a “primary person” model, in which each student has one adult mentor who they check in with regularly 
• Alternative approaches to discipline, such as “restorative circles,” which they defined as “conversations intended to repair relationships and find mutually-agreeable solutions, after a behavioral incident or conflict”

“We did feel ourselves really compelled to illustrate how many different actions— taken by different people at different levels of the system— are necessary to support high schools systemically to be the kinds of places that set students up for a life of their own choosing,” said Waite.

While most of the schools started this transformational work before 2020, the pandemic provided a unique opportunity to study high school reform, according to the researchers. These challenging few years “strengthened educators’ dedication to achieving new designs for high school,” while increasing their focus on race, racism and equity.

Waite and Sims noticed that educators and administrators across the board were reflecting on how to provide students with flexibility and support without compromising rigor and high expectations. As teachers welcomed students back from remote learning, they needed to prioritize creating a supportive environment to see young people through a disruptive, traumatizing period. But now they’re questioning what comes next.

In discussing leniency during the pandemic, one teacher said, “We didn’t teach coping mechanisms, we just protected [students].” Teacher turnover and burnout also made it hard to hold students accountable. At two of the schools studied, the teaching staff was so new that they didn’t know what the classrooms looked like before COVID hit.

As for “college for all,” the researchers found a number of reasons some students are moving away from that mindset, including financial stress and risk, burnout, high-stakes testing and applications, and an understanding that there are an increasing number of jobs that don’t require a college degree. Schools wanted to ensure that college doesn’t become a privilege for a select group of students, while also communicating that a wider variety of options exist. 

High schools alone cannot be held wholly responsible to address all of the challenges presented in the report, the researchers said. “Instead, what we really observed is the incredible power of bridge building between high schools and the higher education sector, as well as between high schools and local employers.”

Waite acknowledged the study’s limitations, noting that these six schools don’t necessarily represent the entire country or even the Northeast. “What we do believe is that the themes and ideas and challenges that came through in the research 
 are really widespread and challenging issues that feel relevant to many different kinds of high schools.”

Schools won’t change the schedule, they redeploy would-be tutors as aides making copies, etc. It’s troubling. And headlines like  and  and  also aren’t helping.   

So what happens next?  

In a March column in ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, Kevin Huffman warned: “I worry that policymakers will pretend high-dosage tutoring is happening at scale and then, when student outcomes do not measurably improve, declare that it hasn’t worked.” 

So what’s the answer for scaling up at quality? Proven good models need to become great, so when they scale and inevitably dilute, they “merely” retreat back to: good. We must make it easier to be a good or great tutor.  And that requires unusual “within program” research and development. In an essay published , the Overdeck Foundation’s Pete Lavorini made that very case, noting there are “a number of exciting innovations underway to lessen the implementation burden without sacrificing effectiveness, by adjusting the high-impact tutoring ‘formula.’ ”

Let me describe what tutor innovation looks like in real life. First, you need decent scale. When I started Match Tutoring in 2004, we had 45 tutors (living literally inside the school, on our ). My friend, economist Matt Kraft, wrote in The74 how measuring that program’s impact launched his career studying tutoring. But 45 people is just not enough educators to easily A/B test “what works for individual tutors.”  

Last year, I met a math educator, Manan Khurma, who founded a math tutoring company in India called Cuemath, with 3,300 tutors. I asked whether I could, with a few colleagues, (carefully) try new ideas, to see what works for his thousands students across the world? Manan said yes, he was interested in anything empirically valid that made tutoring better.  

Scale, check.  

Second, you need a “problem of practice.” We zoomed in on a common problem, familiar to many educators: student talk!  Some kids, especially if confused, are reluctant to speak up, to share what they’re thinking. Common Core and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics both emphasize the need for math discourse, but teacher training in this area hasn’t led to kids speaking up more.  

How to change this?  

My colleague Carol Yu wondered if a Fitbit type device — a “Talk Meter” — might help, or would it annoy kids, or teachers?

We started small, enlisting a few kids and tutors to try a prototype. An AI bot would patrol a tutorial, and then, roughly 20 minutes into a tutorial, a little box would pop up on the screen. It told teacher and student what the talk ratio was, just like a Fitbit offers your step count when you glance at it. If either party was talking too much, they’d adjust.  

The early signals were promising! So we ran a rigorous randomized control trial with 742 Cuemath teachers, and enlisted some research help, from Stanford’s Dora Demszky. This is often a third step: Enlist a scholar to bolster your measurement efforts.  

The results were strong. In a forthcoming journal article, Dr. Demszky will describe the full experiment, but the punchline is student reasoning increased by 24%, and the talk ratio converged on 50-50 between kid and tutor — exactly what we wanted. Tutors asked better questions, and “built” on what kids said.  Both students and tutors liked the Talk Meter (it led to lighthearted, warm interactions as well). Introverts particularly improved.    

Fourth, you can layer experiments on top of one another. One we’re trying now is whether one-on-one coaching would build on TalkMeter success.  

Should other programs build their own TalkMeters or tutor coaching efforts? That’s not our claim (though when I shared the TalkMeter result with friends leading other prominent tutoring organizations, several said “OMG — we should do this.”) There’s a key distinction that matters for scale. A technology intervention like TalkMeter is context specific. And a human intervention like coaching is talent specific.

I learned that lesson 14 years ago. We launched a teacher coaching program in New Orleans, with a wonderful educator named Erica. I enlisted Matt Kraft to measure it. He found large gains for teachers. Then we added coaches. The impact was diluted — a finding he wrote about .  

The point here is that high quality experiments, often in partnership with scholars, can help specific program models vault to greatness, as a way to counteract inevitable dilution at scale.   

While we co-sign on the Guryan/Ludwig desire to “push” schools to do hard things, we also should make hard things easier, to have “good” impact by combining “great programs” with “merely solid” execution. (Of course, nothing can overcome shoddy execution).  

That’s the only way this high-dosage tutoring movement will survive and expand. 

Student scores in the state’s standardized test have continued to improve since the pandemic, but more than half of Texas students are still struggling with math and about a half of them are below grade-level reading, according to score data from this spring released Wednesday.

While overall math scores improved from last year after falling to their lowest levels in a decade, they have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. And while the percentage of students who can read at grade-level — the reading level appropriate to most students in their grade — is higher than before the pandemic, overall scores in this subject remained flat from last year. The state’s most vulnerable students still lag behind state averages in both subjects.

Each spring, Texas students in third through eighth grade take the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness test in math and reading. Fifth- and eighth-graders also take the STAAR test in science, eighth-graders take a social studies version of the test and high school students take some STAAR tests known as end-of-course assessments.

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The scores released Wednesday are the first to come out since the STAAR test was redesigned to more closely resemble what students learn in a classroom setting. The new test did not appear to have a significant impact on student performance.

Forty-three percent of students taking math in third through eighth grade or Algebra I met grade level or above this year, a 3-percentage-point increase from the previous year. Fifty-two percent of students who took reading in third through eighth grade, English I or English II met grade level or above, which is the same percentage as the year before.

While the math scores represent an increase from last year, they are still 7 percentage points behind the state average in 2019, before the pandemic hit. Reading scores, on the other hand, have seen a 5-percentage-point increase since then.

“Teachers across Texas continue to work with passion and skill to help students learn,” Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said. “This year’s results show the efforts of our educators continue to deliver improved results for students.”

Test scores for the state’s most vulnerable students — such as special education students, bilingual students and low-income students — continue to lag behind state averages, but gains have been made in recent years. About 60% of Texas’ 5.5 million students are considered economically disadvantaged.

In math, only 33% of low-income students met or exceeded grade level, compared with the 60% of students who met grade level but are not considered low income. This year’s score for low-income students is a 3-percentage-point increase from last year but still 8-percentage-points lower than 2019 scores.

In reading, only 41% of low-income students met grade level, compared with the 71% of students who met grade level but are not considered low income. The 41% did not change from last year but is 5- percentage-points higher than 2019 scores.

The latest scores show that 33% of bilingual students met grade level, representing a 2-percentage-point increase from last year and a 10-percentage-point increase from 2019. In math, 32% of these students met grade level, a 3-percentage-point increase from last year but still 4-percentage-points lower from 2019 scores.

Meanwhile, 16% of special education students met grade level in math, a 3-percentage-point increase from last year but 1-percentage-point lower compared with 2019 levels. In reading, 17% of these students met grade level, the same as last year, but the figure is 5-percentage-points higher than 2019 scores.

Broken down by race and ethnicity, 58% of white students and 79% of Asian students were at grade level in math, but both groups are still behind pre-pandemic scores. Among Hispanic students, who make up more than half of Texas’ student population, 36% met grade level, 9-percentage-point lower than 2019 and a 2-percentage-point increase from last year. Only 28% of Black students, who make up about 13% of the state’s student population, met grade level, a 3-percentage-point increase from last year, but 7-percentage-points lower than 2019.

In reading, 68% of white students and 82% of Asian students met grade level, both representing increases from pre-pandemic scores. Forty-five percent of Hispanic students met grade level for the subject, the same as last year and 5-percentage-points higher than 2019. Forty-one percent of Black students met grade level, a 1-percentage-point increase from last year, but 7-percentage-points lower than 2019 scores.

Mary Lynn Pruneda, senior policy adviser for the public policy think tank Texas 2036, said the results show that students are continuing to recover from the learning disruption created by the pandemic, but noted that fewer students are reaching mastery-level performance, the top tier on the exam. In almost every grade level for both math and reading, the percentage of students who mastered either subject fell from last year and is still lagging compared with pre-pandemic levels.

Pruneda said the results show that past investments in schools to help with student performance are paying dividends but more is needed.

Over the last several years, the Texas Legislature has tried to move the needle with laws providing more tutoring for struggling kids, more preparation for educators on how to teach reading to kids and more high-quality teaching materials.

Schools have also received federal funds to aid learning recovery after the pandemic. And a special legislative session expected sometime this fall will provide another opportunity for lawmakers to pass laws that spur academic growth.

“The decisions and investments we make now will shape the opportunities that generations of students will have following graduation to pursue higher education or start a meaningful career,” Pruneda said.

Disclosure: Texas 2036 has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Thursday’s grants, totaling $6 million, add to a growing number of commitments from the outfit that was incubated and launched by the nonprofit America Achieves in the spring of 2022 to confront the educational impact of the pandemic. 

Last month the organization announced five “States Leading Recovery” grants, each in the amount of $1 million, providing funds to Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana and Ohio to bolster state education agencies’ efforts to rapidly develop and scale tutoring programs with the aim of making “tutoring a standard part of the American school day.” Previously in November, Accelerate also announced $10 million in grants to 31 groups to make tutoring more accessible and affordable. 

Accelerate’s mission extends beyond tutoring programming to funding more research around implementation and best practices. In a launch essay penned by Accelerate CEO Kevin Huffman and Executive Chair Janice Jackson and published exclusively by ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ on April, 19, 2022, the duo wrote about Accelerate’s urgent focus on getting more tutoring to more students more quickly in more effective ways: “The nation’s public schools will spend billions of dollars over the next two school years on tutoring and personalized learning in the effort to catch students up. It is critical that these resources both help those who desperately need support today and build a base of knowledge that will change how schools operate moving forward. This can be accomplished only through a commitment to innovation, research and efficient sharing of lessons learned. We are hopeful that Accelerate can help fill this role.”

Research was also a component of Thursday’s announcement, with Accelerate noting that “every grantee will engage in research during the 2023-2024 school year, and ten grantees will participate in an Accelerate-funded research.” 

Below is Thursday’s full release on the 32 programs receiving either $150,000 “Innovation” grants or $250,000 “Promise” grants: 

Today’s grants come from Accelerate’s Call to Effective Action program, which supports innovation, research, and implementation in the tutoring field in order to help expand access to high-impact tutoring and raise student achievement. Grantees are working in 20 states across the country. 

“The evidence behind tutoring as an intervention is strong and the field is making tremendous progress, but we still need more providers with a proven track record that can also scale,” said Accelerate CEO Kevin Huffman. “Before the federal pandemic relief dollars dry up, we have an opportunity – and a responsibility – to identify these providers and ensure they are able to deliver cost-effective programs and present evidence that they get results for kids.”

A recent finds that many districts intend to continue investing in tutoring after ESSER funding expires. However, teachers today are stretched thin as they continue to address pandemic-era learning gaps. High-impact tutoring must be made classroom-ready and easy to implement to fulfill its promise as an intervention. For these grants, Accelerate prioritized tutoring providers that are using technology to reduce barriers to individualized instruction; identifying untapped sources of potential tutors such as paraprofessionals or college students; aligning tutoring content with high-quality instructional materials; and/or designing programming to serve particular groups of students such as multi-language learners, students with disabilities, and those in rural settings.

All Call to Effective Action grantees have shown a commitment to developing and scaling research-backed tutoring models that improve outcomes for all students, especially those in historically underserved communities. Grantees have been selected for one of two grant tracks, Innovation Grants or Promise Grants. High-potential tutoring models that do not yet have preliminary or early-stage evidence of impact on student outcomes received Innovation Grants of up to $150,000 each to support program development, implementation, and data collection. Established tutoring models with evidence of scalability and positive student outcomes received Promise Grants of up to $250,000 each to support program implementation to further develop the respective model’s evidence base. 

Every grantee will engage in research during the 2023-2024 school year, and ten grantees will participate in an Accelerate-funded research cohort led by , a regional office of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a part of this cohort, organizations will be matched with a researcher in the J-PAL network, attend trainings on key evaluation concepts, and receive support to run high-quality randomized evaluations. 

“Every student deserves the resources and opportunities to be successful in school,” said NYC Public Schools Chancellor David C. Banks. “We are so honored to receive this grant, which will greatly expand access to high impact tutoring for students at over 80 New York City public schools.” 

“Amplify Tutoring is honored to be a second year recipient of an Accelerate grant,” said Alanna Phelan, Vice President of Tutoring at Amplify. “This partnership will enable us to further build our evidence base as we continue to scale and innovate on our high-impact tutoring solutions that strengthen reading outcomes for students nationwide. We are excited to contribute to research about how effective tutoring can be transformative for young scholars.” 

“The Call to Effective Action grant will help Joyful Readers serve more than 1,000 Philadelphia elementary students through our high-impact AmeriCorps reading tutoring program in the 23-24 school year,” said David Weinstein, Founder & Executive Director of Joyful Readers. “We’re grateful to Accelerate for this grant and excited to partner with national experts in the field to improve our implementation, evaluation, and ultimately, our student outcomes. Being recognized by a national leader like Accelerate validates the hard work of our staff, AmeriCorps tutors, and school and district partners.” 

The grantees of the 2023 Call to Effective Action program are, in alphabetical order:

100 Black Men of Metro Baton Rouge

Air Education

Amplify

Bamboo Learning

Bay Area Tutoring Association

District of Columbia Public Schools

Elevate Birmingham and Leaders of Excellence

FEV Tutor

Heart Math Tutoring

Ignite! Reading

Illuminate Literacy

Intervene K-12

Joyful Readers

JUMP Math

KIPP Indy

Littera Education Inc

New York City Public Schools (The Fund for Public Schools)

Oko Labs

Once

OnYourMark Education

Peer Teach

READ USA, Inc.

Reading Futures

Reading Partners

Saga Education

Southeast Community Foundation

The Literacy Lab

Third Space Learning

Trustees of Boston University

Tutored by Teachers

Values to Action

Zearn

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Overdeck Family Foundation provide financial support to both Accelerate and ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

On this 40th anniversary of the influential “A Nation At Risk” report (see our special report on those 36 pages that changed American education), we’re taking a moment to reflect on the new risks posed by COVID learning losses when it comes to today’s students and recent graduates. Here’s some of our recent coverage about student performance and learning recovery efforts:  

—The Terrible Truth: Current solutions to COVID learning loss are doomed to fail (Read more) 

—Math Losses: Damage revealed by the Nation’s Report Card could cost graduates and the economy nearly $1 trillion (Read more) 

—Stalled Reading Scores: Test results flat for 3rd grade ‘COVID Kids’ (Read more) 

—Behind Grade Level: Federal data show 49% of students started last school year behind (Read more) 

—TłÜłÙŽÇ°ùŸ±ČÔČ”: Researcher Matthew Kraft talks about how the right tutoring materials & training can help students make gains (Read more) 

—Extra Class Time: In rare move, New Mexico adds weeks’ worth of additional instruction (Read more)

—Go Deeper: Receive all the latest news about learning losses and COVID recovery by signing up for ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s newsletter 

That’s where begins. His graphic novel follows not only his journey with brain cancer, but also his passion for teaching community college. “A lot of the cancer story,” Bessie said, “is part of who I am as a teacher.” He had long enjoyed the infectious energy and “electrical current,” as he calls it in the book, that flows through an engaged classroom.

He felt “profound joy” re-entering class, he said. But then he experienced the profound irony that as soon as he returned to campus, everyone left because of the Pandemic. That’s when he began writing his book.

The novel “really comes immediately from the experience of going online,” he says. Read an excerpt from the book right here: 

While Zoom tethered his students together during the crisis, he writes in his book, it also came with its own strict demands: access to a computer, stable Wi-Fi and a quiet study space, all parameters “set by the software requirements,” not educators. He said giving in to these demands could threaten community colleges’ open access mission, squeezing out the neediest students — the very students they’re designed to uplift. 

Bessie says he loves community college for its promise, where students of all socioeconomic backgrounds and all ethnicities come together to form a community. “It gives me a lot of hope,” he said, “for the future of our democracy.

So far the book is garnering praise: Publishers Weekly gave it a , calling it “poignant” and one of the chapters. It also named it one of graphic novels and adult comics. Watch our profile of Bessie, and see parts of the book, right here. 

—Produced by James Fields

In a sampling of 12 districts, fewer than 10% of students had received tutoring services during the fall semester of 2023. School officials in Indianapolis, for example, say a focus on quality made immediate scaling difficult and that they plan to enroll a higher number of students in tutoring programs moving forward. According to the Council of Chief State School Officers, at least sixteen states have established their own tutoring programs using a collective $470 million in federal COVID aid. Despite the challenge of reaching students, states like , , and continue to announce new tutoring initiatives and investments.

In other funding news, the Education Department granted extensions to the amount of time that at least seven states and D.C. have to spend down the first tranche of COVID-19 school relief funds received during the height of the pandemic. Originally required to be spent by the end of January 2023, . The states include, in addition to D.C., Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, Mississippi, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin. A smaller handful of states additionally received extensions to spend down Governor’s Emergency Education Relief dollars. 

Looking beyond issues of COVID relief funding, below are updates from nine other states about how school systems are confronting the challenges posed by COVID-19 and its variants — and working to preserve student progress amid the pandemic:

MISSOURI — New Testing Data Show K-12 Student Performance Dropped Dramatically

Missouri is reporting that to levels that would typically, had a pandemic not taken place, see school systems lose accreditation. State education leaders say they will “not downgrade” any school districts based on the data, but are focused on driving resources and improvements to help schools and students recover academically. 

MARYLAND — Schools to Receive Added $600 Million as Blueprint Funds Flow to Districts

School districts across Maryland are preparing for double-digit increases in K-12 education spending as a historic statewide investment called the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future drives over $600 million in additional funding to budgets next school year alone. The Blueprint, a statewide law heralded as one of the most transformative education plans ever approved, aims to infuse nearly $4 billion in added school funding over its ten years of implementation, increase teachers’ salaries to a base of $60,000, and prop up universal preschool programs.

OREGON — Lawmakers Weigh Kotek Plan for More State Authority Over School Districts

Gov. Tina Kotek has proposed a bill that would create a sizable shift in oversight for public schools. Citing limited action the Oregon Department of Education is allowed to take when schools are out of compliance, SB 1045 would create . Gov. Kotek’s education advisor, Melissa Goff, “portrayed the bill as a balance between providing support and tightening accountability, with an emphasis on the latter,” writes Rob Manning in coverage for OPB. The proposal has been met with criticism among some Oregon education leaders, organizations and other stakeholders, who claim the bill is solely focused on compliance without sufficient emphasis on support.

INDIANA — How Literacy and the ‘Science of Reading’ Get a Big Lift from Bus Drivers at One School

One Indianapolis school’s is drawing attention to both the need for schools to be flexible and innovative amidst sharp staffing challenges, as well as the growing pressure educators at all levels feel to zero in on the “science of reading” to address long standing concerns in literacy achievement. Statewide, Indiana lawmakers are now considering stronger action to ensure early educators are teaching reading in an evidence-based way via Senate Bill 402, which, if passed, would ban the use of the critiqued instructional method called three-cueing and would require schools to adopt reading curriculum aligned to the science of reading. 

ALABAMA – Teachers Could Get $1,000 for Classroom Supplies

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey is proposing to this year, delivering on a promise made by state superintendent Eric Mackey in 2018, when the average supplies stipend was just $422. State officials have raised the amount dedicated to teachers for supplies every year since then.

COLORADO — Denver’s Reforms Led to Huge Academic Growth, Study Finds. But Will They Last?

A new study is raising up over a decade of education reform and innovation in Denver Public Schools that, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Denver, has “led to some of the most significant learning gains ever measured.” Between 2008 and 2019, the district went from one of the ten lowest performing systems in Colorado to between the 60-65th percentile in math and ELA. Officials say the substantial gains in academic achievement were a testament of a suite of reforms — from flexible governing models and growth of charter schools to the closure of the lowest-performing schools and an innovative school ratings system. “The evidence we have is that students benefited from these reforms,” says Parker Baxter, the study’s lead author. 

PENNSYLVANIA — Gov. Shapiro Touts Tax Incentive for New Teachers as a Way to Ease Shortage

To bolster Pennsylvania’s teacher recruitment and retention efforts amid a slowdown in the issuance of teacher certifications, Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed . The financial incentive is one of three solutions to remedy issues like teacher retention and recruitment, infrastructure, and student mental health brought on by the pandemic. In addition to the tax incentive, Gov. Shapiro has proposed an increased 2023-2024 education budget. “I believe in Pennsylvania every person, especially our children, should have the freedom to chart their own course and the opportunity to succeed,” Gov. Shapiro said. “It starts in our public schools.”

NORTH DAKOTA — Burgum Signs Bill Requiring K-12 Computer Science and Cybersecurity Instruction

Eight years after North Dakota’s Department of Public Instruction tasked a group with creating a vision for K-12 computer science and cybersecurity education, Gov. Doug Burgum has signed HB1398. The bill . EduTech, a division of North Dakota Information Technology, will provide examples of cybersecurity and computer science lessons that will support schools in developing their own plans to integrate the subjects. “Our students have more access than ever to computers and technology devices in our schools. It’s crucial that our students also learn cyber safety skills,” Burgum said. “The ability to manage technology is also important in helping our North Dakota students to get good jobs.”

NEW MEXICO — In Rare Move, State Adds Weeks’ Worth of Extra K-12 Class Time

New Mexico Gov. Lujan Grisham signed into law last month a bill that would increase the number of required instructional days by 27 for elementary students and 10 for middle and high school students. The law will increase instructional time in roughly 75% of school districts, with the remaining having already met the new threshold. The move is being praised by educators and advocates focused on addressing learning loss stemming from the pandemic. “We needed time for small-group tutoring and targeted instruction, time for enrichment, time to plan, time for addressing social-emotional needs, time for our students to catch up after the pandemic,” said Mandi Torrez, a former New Mexico Teacher of the Year. “Time was where we needed to start.”

This update on pandemic recovery in education collects and shares news updates from the district, state, and national levels as all stakeholders continue to work on developing safe, innovative plans to resume schooling and address learning loss. It’s an offshoot of the Collaborative for Student Success’ QuickSheet newsletter, which you can .

Researchers, for their part, believe stagnancy among third graders is preferable to steep declines and proves learning loss interventions like tutoring and additional group instruction have been effective measures. Tennessee is cited as an example of a state taking the lead, with state leaders investing in high-quality instructional materials backed in the science of reading and aligned teacher training to narrow literacy gaps among students.

Elsewhere, data released from separate reports by Chalkbeat and the RAND Corporation, are that are bucking hopes that staffing challenges would mitigate years after the worst of the pandemic. 

Teacher turnover was estimated at 10% nationally at the end of the 2022 school year, at least 4% higher than pre-pandemic — though the rate appears to spike when compared state-to-state, with turnover as high as 15% in places like South Carolina and Louisiana. The RAND data suggests that is around 16% nationally, climbing nearly 13% percentage points through the pandemic. Staff turnover remains high despite nearly 90% of districts reporting they’ve implemented new policies and initiatives aimed at mitigating recruitment and retention woes.

Looking beyond literacy scores and teacher turnover, below is our latest roundup of updates from 10 states about how school systems are confronting the challenges posed by COVID-19 and its variants — and working to preserve student progress amid the pandemic:

WASHINGTON STATE — New Bill Would Reduce Classroom Learning By Four Hours a Week, Prioritizing Teacher Development

A bill proposed in Washington state is raising concerns for allocating up to four hours per week during the school day for teacher professional collaboration and development. Proponents say greater collaboration between teachers will allow for improved instruction and interventions for students, while critics say the measure would result in students instead of 30.

NORTH CAROLINA — Board of Education Aims to Increase Teacher Pay

The North Carolina Board of Education has submitted a teacher pay plan to the state legislature . The proposal is receiving pushback from the state teachers union, which says increases should not be tied to student performance as measured by test scores. If approved by the legislature, a teacher’s starting annual salary in the state would be raised to $38,000.

ILLINOIS — Chicago’s Next Mayor Will Be a Former Educator

After Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s stunning defeat in the city’s recent mayoral election, will proceed to a runoff election on April 4th. Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, a former public school teacher and Chicago Teachers Union organizer, will face off against Paul Vallas, who served as CEO of Chicago Public Schools from 1995 to 2001.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — DC School Aims to Make CTE More Attractive & Accessible

District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) are t for an increasing number of students. The district says six high schools now boast 30 industry certifications and 24 career pathways, from computer engineering and hospitality to culinary service and biomedical sciences. “There’s two things we know about our students,” said DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee. “Students who participate in extracurriculars and students who participate in our career and technical education programs are the most successful after graduation in DCPS, and, in fact, that is actually true nationally as you look at outcomes.”

MONTANA — Gov. Gianforte Signs K-12 School Funding Increases Into Law

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a measure into law , resulting in an additional $85 million in funding for schools in the Treasure State. The budget increases come as lawmakers in the state legislature consider a range of education bills focused on topics like teacher recruitment and retention, early childhood literacy, and the expansion of public charter schools.

KANSAS — As Governor Emphasizes Funding for Special Education, Lawmakers Focus on Private Schools

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is continuing her push for a fully funded special education system as the state’s lawmakers convene their legislative session. Kelly’s proposed budget would see an increase in state special education funding of about $75 million a year over the next five years while the governor’s office also increases pressure on the federal government to shoulder a larger share of the funding that it currently is, at 13%. Lawmakers, however, that would allow state funding to be used by families for attendance at private schools.

ILLINOIS — Governor Proposes $70 Million Program to Hire and Retain Teachers Amid Teacher Shortage

State lawmakers are considering a number of education funding increases and new programs put forth in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s annual budget proposal, including a $250 million investment in early childhood education and as districts struggle with stubborn staffing shortages. Other bills being considered would expand student mental health resources, expand kindergarten across the state, and would bolster resources meant to support migrant youth.

MAINE — Blowing the Whistle on Maine’s Flagrant Fouls With Testing

The state’s failure to comply with federal assessment requirements has drawn firm admonition from the U.S. Department of Education. Maine’s Commissioner of Education, Pender Makin received a strongly worded letter from USED’s James Lane . As a consequence of violating federal requirements, USED is also warned that a quarter of Maine’s Title I, Part A funding — or roughly $117,422 — could be withheld. AssessmentHQ’s Dale Chu, commenting on the developments, says “There’s a symbolic power to the feds taking this action. While the dollar amount is miniscule, Uncle Sam can throw his weight around in other ways and it’s heartening to see him doing so on behalf of Maine’s students even if it is at the eleventh hour.”

NEBRASKA — Lawmaker Proposes Expanding NEST 529 Plans to K-12 Private Education

State Sen. Suzanne Geist is sponsoring a bill that would . The proposal comes as a growing number of states explore ways to increase use of education dollars in private education, though Geist notes that the state’s 529 plans are primarily funded by private funding from families and would not impact public school funding in the state.

NEW JERSEY — State’s Plan to Hire Volunteers to Support K-12 Students Garners Lackluster Response

An initiative announced by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in late 2022 is receiving criticism for failing to meet initial goals. The New Jersey Partnership for Student Success aims to recruit community members and organizations into supportive roles in schools, despite the governor’s initial goal of over 5,000 for the 2023 school year. Critics say the state education leaders have been slow to recruit applicants and don’t have a clear pathway for those who are accepted.

This update on pandemic recovery in education collects and shares news updates from the district, state, and national levels as all stakeholders continue to work on developing safe, innovative plans to resume schooling and address learning loss. It’s an offshoot of the Collaborative for Student Success’ QuickSheet newsletter, which you can . 

The data underscore the resiliency of pandemic-era learning loss and the depth of the challenge schools face in recovering academic losses. 

Looking beyond student proficiency, below is our latest roundup of updates from 12 states about how school systems are confronting the challenges posed by COVID-19 and its variants — and working to preserve student progress amid the pandemic:

IOWA — Schools Prepare to Tighten Budgets as Pandemic Aid Ends

Some school districts in Iowa are proactively strategizing how to keep programs such as full-day pre-school fully funded once . Karla Hogan, Cedar Rapids schools’ executive director of business services, said her district is simultaneously reserving some of its state funds from other areas while pushing on lawmakers to approve revised funding at the state level to avoid program cuts and layoffs.

OHIO — Governor Pushes For Science of Reading As Only Approach:

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is being described as taking the nation’s reckoning on literacy instruction and the “science of reading” to new heights, proposing legislation that bars literacy approaches many say have lost credibility. Under the proposal, materials or lessons using approaches without a strong evidence base, including the use of “three-cueing”, would be banned, which could include widely used programs like Balanced Literacy, Whole Language, and Reading Recovery. “There is a great deal of research about how we learn to read,” he said. “And today, we understand the great value and importance of phonics. Not all literacy curriculums are created equal, and sadly, many Ohio students do not have access to the most effective reading curriculum.”

ILLINOIS — Gov. J.B. Pritzker Renews Pre-K Expansion Push with 2024 Budget Proposing $250 Million Increase

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker proposed increasing the state’s education budget by over the last budget, a notable push as he marks the beginning of his second term in office. While he’ll need approval from state lawmakers, in “positive social and economic impacts” The proposal includes significant expansions in Pre-K programs across the state, centering on a four-year plan to create 20,000 Pre-K seats in classrooms by 2027. 

TEXAS — Dallas ISD Changed Some School Schedules to Combat Learning Loss. Did It Work?:

Two years after Dallas Independent School District , the district is digging into data to learn if the extended calendars made a difference for students. Dallas ISD Chief Academic Officer Shannon Trejo previewed data at a recent Board of Trustees meeting that indicates that offering three potential calendars – a standard calendar, an intersession calendar, and a school-day redesign calendar – may have helped some students recover and “retain” learning, though the gains were smaller than what trustees had expected. 

CALIFORNIA — 1.3 Million Los Angeles Students Could Soon Access Free Teletherapy

A new partnership between Los Angeles county schools and telehealth provider Hazel Health could provide short-term mental health services to the region’s 1.3 million students amid a statewide focus on addressing spiking rates of suicide, depression, and other mental health concerns. After up to six weeks of services, Hazel Health says it is positioned to help connect students and families requiring long-term treatment to community-based providers. 

UTAH — Lawmakers Push to End School Grading

A bill being considered by the Utah legislature to evaluate schools and has cleared the House Education Committee with over 24 co-sponsors. The push is being spearheaded by State Rep. Douglas Welton, a former public school teacher, with support from the Utah State Board, the Utah Education Association, and the School Boards Association. If passed, the state would still identify schools performing in the bottom 20% for interventions, but would no longer assign schools grades A-F. A second education-focused bill in the legislature would tie recently approved teacher pay increases to inflation. 

MISSISSIPPI — New Study Says Holding Kids Back One Key Factor in Mississippi’s Reading Revolution

“A report released last week by ExcelinEd and Wheelock Educational Policy Center at Boston University should end the debate over the value of holding back students who are not reading at grade level by the end of third grade,” writes Dr. Kymyona Burk of ExcelinEd and former Mississippi state superintendent Carey Wright. The report points to the policy as a main driver behind Mississippi’s sharp increase in reading scores for fourth graders on the 2019 National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP. Mississippi was the only state to post gains in ELA on the exam. 

ILLINOIS — Chicago Spent Big on Summer School in 2022. But Tracking Participation Proved Difficult

Chicago Public Schools is working through a secondary challenge posed by historic amounts of federal recovery dollars and the relatively rapid deployment of out-of-school and summer programs: tracking enrollment and participation. Data obtained by Chalkbeat on summer learning. However, the data makes it tricky to discern how many actually registered, how frequently and to what extent students showed up, and what kinds of positive impacts the investments may have had on learning or social and emotional health. The district says it’s at work to improve data collection and reporting for the summer of 2023.

KANSAS — State Program to Give $1,000 to Some Families to Fight Learning Loss. Here’s How to Apply

The Kansas Education Enrichment Program (KEEP), announced recently by Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, aims to provide families meant to help recover lost learning incurred during the pandemic. Funding for KEEP comes from Kansas’ share of the American Rescue Plan Act’s State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund.

TENNESSEE — What Do Teachers Think About Curriculum Quality? Tennessee Knows

“It’s one (commendable) thing for states to prioritize access to high-quality instructional materials and training for educators,” writes policy expert Jocelyn Pickford on the CurriculumHQ platform, “it’s another (even more commendable) thing to track and study how those priorities are actually showing up in classrooms.” Pickford showing “a deep dive into teachers’ beliefs about curriculum and professional learning quality, among several other topics.” Of note: 87% of teachers (regardless of subject) said their professional learning has been closely aligned to the instructional materials that have been adopted by their district and have led to improvements in their classroom instruction. Learn more on CurriculumHQ. 

NORTH CAROLINA — House Committee OKs Software for Learning Loss

North Carolina’s House Education Committee has to be used to provide districts with access to Gooru Navigator, a program that “provides teachers and parents with up-to-the-minute performance data on how students are performing in the classroom,” for up to three years. Jamey Faulkenberry, director of government affairs for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, told lawmakers the distinguishing feature of Gooru Navigator is that other platforms can feed into it, making the software more workable for localities.

NEVADA — Governor Joe Lombardo Orders K-12 Audits in an Attempt to Improve the State’s Public Education System

After campaigning partially on increasing transparency and accountability for K-12 public schools in the state, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo , with the goal of soon providing recommendations on how to improve K-12 outcomes in the state. The 14 various forms of audit include those on financial compliance and civil rights and must be submitted to the governor’s office by March 1.

This update on pandemic recovery in education collects and shares news updates from the district, state, and national levels as all stakeholders continue to work on developing safe, innovative plans to resume schooling and address learning loss. It’s an offshoot of the Collaborative for Student Success’ QuickSheet newsletter, which you can .

In recent weeks, at least seven states have advanced discussions or legislation around “school choice” measures like charter school expansions and the establishment of Education Savings Accounts, which allow families to use state education funds towards attendance at private schools. Largely modeled on previous school choice efforts in and , among others, states like Nebraska, Iowa, , and are forging ahead with their efforts to allow use of education funds outside of traditional public school systems.

Looking beyond parental choice, here are ten other updates from across the country about how states and school systems are confronting the challenges posed by COVID-19 and its variants — and working to preserve student progress amid the pandemic:

CONNECTICUT — A State Program to Reduce Chronic Absenteeism Is Working

A new report by an between the Connecticut Education Department and prominent state research institutions — including Yale University, the University of Connecticut, and Wesleyan University — demonstrated implemented in some 15 Connecticut school districts. The program — called the or LEAP — was fueled by federal recovery dollars and leveraged trained family support staff to conduct home visits to families of students deemed chronically absent. Since 2021, home visitors have helped hundreds of families navigate distinct challenges like employment, housing, mental and physical healthcare, substance abuse, and the immigration system to ensure students attend school regularly and on-time. The study found an average improvement in chronic absenteeism rates of 15 percentage points, with some districts — like Hartford Public Schools — experiencing gains nearly twice that size.

INDIANA — State Doles Out $2.2 Million in STEM Grant Funding

The Indiana Department of Education recently announced that 48 school districts and charter schools across the state . The STEM Integration Grant seeks to increase access and support for schools to offer more learning opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math.

ILLINOIS — State Superintendent Proposes $516 Million More for Education

Illinois lawmakers are considering a budget request from outgoing State Superintendent Carmen Ayala , or a 5.3% increase. The request includes roughly $350 million more for K-12 schools, $60 million more for pre-K programs, and additional increases for “transportation, special education, and free meals,” according to Chalkbeat. 

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams Promises Mental Telehealth Support for all NYC High School Students

Amid spiraling concern about student wellbeing in the nation’s largest school district, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that all the city’s high school-aged students would . Framed as “the biggest student mental health program in the nation,” the announcement was met with cautious optimism from school and health professionals in the city. “It raises lots of procedural questions which maybe they will fill in later, but it’s hard for me not to focus on those right away,” said Kevin Dahill-Fuchel, the executive director of Counseling in Schools. 

PENNSYLVANIA — High Schools Could Start Offering Students K-12 Education Training Next School Year

To expose students to careers in education and further develop and diversify the teacher pipeline, the Pennsylvania Department of Education will begin starting next school year. Schools can choose to offer the program informally or with department approval: the latter will make schools eligible for state and federal funding, according to Pennsylvania’s CTE director, Lee Burket. 

TENNESSEE — State Schools Need $9 Billion of Infrastructure Investment, Report Says

According to a new state report, Tennessee to tackle needs for renovations and technology improvements, as well as to build additions and new schools. The state received over $4 billion in federal relief funds, but under direction from Gov. Bill Lee, districts were encouraged to put at least half of their portions toward education recovery programs and resources. The report cites research that indicates investments in K-12 infrastructure can improve learning, health, and behavior, while noting local and state officials struggle to determine how to cover these costs. 

MICHIGAN — Whitmer’s Fifth State of the State Prioritizes Expanded Preschool, Tutoring

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s fifth State of the State address included multiple nods to expanded education programming in the state, including a push for universal preschool for all 4-year-olds and . Whitmer’s plans are expected to be thoroughly debated, even as she enjoys a Democratic majority in the state legislature and a state budget surplus, as advocates call attention to sharp staffing challenges and increasing clamor for expanded school choice policies.

NEBRASKA — Teacher Shortage Worsening Across Nebraska, State Report Says

The number of unfilled teaching positions in Nebraska , according to a district survey conducted by the state department of education. Though the unfilled positions represent just under 3% of total positions in the state, officials say the increases reflect a “shrinking applicant pool” that is posing particular challenges for hard-to-staff subjects, like special education, career programs, and language arts.

HAWAII — State Outlines Plan for 465 More Pre-K Classrooms by 2032

Education leaders’ goal of providing pre-K opportunities for all children in Hawaii within the next decade is kicking off with the planned construction or refurbishment of 80 classrooms by August 2024. The $200 million plan and places Hawaii amongst a small group of states that have approved large-scale expansions of pre-K programs.

MINNESOTA — Governor Proposes Child Tax Credits, Universal Free Lunch, Boost in K-12 Education Funding

Gov. Tim Walz has proposed a substantial K-12 education package that includes efforts to increase affordable childcare, universal free meals for Minnesota students, and a child tax credit for low income families. “This budget will tackle and eliminate child poverty, put money into families’ pockets and fund our schools,” said Gov. Walz. Walz was met with criticism from lawmakers across the aisle, who argue the proposed budget would send funds to schools that are failing to address low test scores and large achievement gaps.

This update on pandemic recovery in education collects and shares news updates from the district, state, and national levels as all stakeholders continue to work on developing safe, innovative plans to resume schooling and address learning loss. It’s an offshoot of the Collaborative for Student Success’ QuickSheet newsletter, which you can .

If you want to know what’s really behind our scores, come see the teams of educators fostering the magic of education in L.A.’s schools. You’ll find teachers deeply committed to the children in their classrooms. Our teachers take hours of training to excel in providing rigorous learning experiences both online, when we were at the height of the pandemic, and back in the classroom once it was safe to return. Our educators are identifying and addressing students’ learning and achievement gaps — an area where teachers nationally lack confidence, according to.

The district has been intentional in implementing interventions to address the learning loss from the pandemic. We launched the All Families Connected initiative, which provided hotspots and high-speed internet access to family homes to reduce the digital divide and provide equitable access to connectivity. We’ve increased instructional time through programs like Acceleration Days, which adds four optional days to the school calendar for teachers to work with students who need additional support.

More than 100,000 students participated in Los Angeles Unified’s high-quality summer school to make up ground lost during the pandemic. The district has been aggressive in offering tutoring to every student, either virtually through on-demand, 24/7 programs or at school through high-dosage options that provide individual, customizable instruction. We have also focused on attendance and student outreach to ensure that students come to class. On Nov. 4 alone, 400 volunteers across the district made 7,000 home visits to meet students who confronted challenges that inhibited their regular attendance the past year. Our iAttend initiative has successfully identified reasons for student chronic absenteeism, implemented responses and, just within the past year, decreased chronic absenteeism (15-plus days absent) by 5% and increased excellent attendance (seven or fewer days absent) by 3%.

The challenges persist. There is still more to do. We’re not fully recovered from the pandemic, and there are opportunity gaps that pre-date COVID that desperately need addressing.

Despite these difficulties and hardships, our students are excelling, which makes the naysayers, questioners and skeptics of our NAEP results all the more frustrating — those who would cite data anomalies or outlier results, or simply say our scores don’t sit right. Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the Nation’s Report Card, has confirmed the accuracy and validity of our test scores after NCES verified its results numerous times. Questions about whether Los Angeles Unified’s enrollment losses over the past few years correlated to higher test results carry the assumption that poorer-performing students (read: children of color and English learners) had been keeping scores low. Yet, publicly available shows that demographic and language classification breakdowns have largely remained the same between NAEP exams.

I am no stranger to skepticism, as a child who immigrated to this country alone — poor, undocumented, homeless and an English learner — and faced a system that told me I didn’t matter. Sadly, Los Angeles Unified students confront the misgivings of a suspicious society on a daily basis and are often told college isn’t for them, not to strive beyond their socioeconomic class and to stay where they belong. 

Why does society assume the worst and expect the least from urban school districts?  Put bluntly, why do pundits and education experts saddle children with the burden of low expectations and then assume there must be a data anomaly when they exceed those expectations? It’s the evolution of Jim Crow suppression where the world tells Black and brown kids, “you don’t matter.”

As the superintendent of the second-largest district in the United States and former superintendent of one of the highest-performing urban districts in the country, I find it disheartening that the country in 2022 is still mired in outdated, pre-1950s biases that limit children’s potential. I’m tired of this. It’s unfair to the students, families and dedicated teachers who tirelessly work every day to ensure every child has access to the life-changing power of public education. 

Los Angeles Unified children, and those teaching them, deserve better than to be viewed with a side-eye of skepticism.

Our students are the changemakers the future desperately needs. I’m confident we’ll see even more progress in the months and years to come. I trust such success will be welcomed and celebrated rather than questioned and mistrusted.

“There were political ripples to these phenomena as well.”

In a recent livestream discussion addressing issues of education, parental choice and the 2022 midterms, a panel of experts considered to what degree the disruptions of the pandemic have altered the dynamics and landscape of education politics. (You can watch the full conversation here) 

The event was sponsored by ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ and the Progressive Policy Institute’s Reinventing America’s Schools project, and moderated by PPI’s Tressa Pankovits; panelists included Andy Rotherham, a member of the Virginia State School Board and ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Board of Directors; journalist and author Anya Kamenetz; Michael Hartney of the Hoover Institute; George Parker, former educator, teachers union president and adviser to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools; and 74 Senior Writer Kevin Mahnken.

The department also said districts could apply for as much as 14 months of extra time to allocate the resources. 

The guidance comes as large groups of state and district superintendents and other education officials are publicly pushing federal officials for clarification on spending deadlines for the nearly $190 billion in total relief aid distributed to schools during the pandemic. 

As for where funds have already been allocated, K-12 Dive by the team at the Georgetown University think tank FutureEd which captures a trend of robust investment in literacy training and development for educators amid widening achievement gaps and flagging reading abilities for students just learning to read. 

Phyllis Jordan, associate director at FutureEd, says that the federal infusion of unprecedented amounts of resources into America’s schools during the pandemic has led to an increase in phonics-based instruction that is evidence-based and aligned to the “Science of Reading.” Jordan points to states like , , and as examples of statewide investments and programming driving improvements in literacy instruction. 

Looking beyond relief funds, here are eight other updates from across the country about how states and school systems are confronting the challenges posed by COVID-19 and its variants — and working to preserve student progress amid the pandemic:

IDAHO — After-School Programs Help Break Down Learning Barriers

A group of Idaho education leaders met to discuss at a conference held on the Fort Hall Reservation in Eastern Idaho. The group raised a multitude of factors compounding to make progress more difficult for students, including pandemic-era learning loss, increased rates of suicides and suicide ideation, and poor access to nutrition or housing. Many of the officials gathered to underscore their belief that after-school programs could be key to breaking down such challenges. “One of the areas we have a real need to serve in our community is providing our kids opportunities they wouldn’t normally get, like dance, taekwondo, art, or music,” said American Falls School District Superintendent Randy Jensen. 

COLORADO – New Federal Grant will Bolster Family Engagement in Colorado Schools

A new in eight states, including Colorado, where officials in the Alamosa School District say the $4.7 million grant is helping them build ways for parents to influence school policies and governance, prop up family literacy programs, and explicitly train parents on working alongside their school boards. Still left to implement are plans to create a parent liaison unit at every school and expand a relatively new home visit program, says one official from Alamosa schools. 

NEW JERSEY — Information Literacy Curriculum Bill Clears Assembly Panel

New Jersey’s General Assembly will soon consider a bill that would create a set of standards for student “information literacy,” a move that, if passed, would require schools to strengthen the development of student critical thinking and research skills. Proponents of the bill say such skills are essential in the digital era, as misinformation and manipulation rapidly increase online, and as more and more people, especially younger generations, increasingly get their news from prominent social media platforms. 

OREGON – Oregon Students Show Steep Decline in Achievement Post-COVID

Oregon schools are . Oregon Department of Education Director Colt Gill acknowledged the role the pandemic played in disrupting schools and student learning, but said he wasn’t “second-guessing” decisions that state officials made over the past two years. Instead of lamenting on the decisions made to prioritize student and educator health, Gill said he’s focused on efforts to accelerate learning, with an eye toward the content students need to learn in a given academic year, so they can be successful the following year.

MARYLAND – New Baltimore Teacher Certification Program Helping with Staff Concerns

A new teaching certification program in Baltimore is seeking to address . Established in partnership with nonprofit TNTP, the Black Educator Excellence Cohort provides financial assistance to aspiring Black educators and aims to attract more diverse teaching candidates in the city’s teaching force. Lawrence Brooks, who is Black, said she wished the cohort had existed when she went through the program. “Opportunities like this are important because they can help ensure students eventually have teachers who look like them,” she said. 

TEXAS – Fort Worth ISD Invests Federal Funds to Boost Family Engagement

After experiencing an uptick in chronic student absenteeism, Fort Worth Independent School District used federal relief dollars to to strengthen the relationship between its schools and families. Monica Ordaz, Caesar Chavez Elementary School principal, sings the praises of their family engagement specialist, Sara Olivo. According to Ordaz, Olivo has been a huge benefit to the school by taking extra responsibilities off other support staff and engaging with families in a way they couldn’t before. School leaders say they are worried they may not be able to sustain these positions and continue to meet the needs of their families once the federal funds are gone.

NEW YORK – New York City’s Apprenticeship Boom for High School Students

New York City high schools are set to expand their “Modern Apprentice” program to increase students’ opportunities to learn skills and gain real world experience in business without financial barriers. “(This) is about getting our students out to the professional world to explore their interests and invest in themselves, their futures, their families, and ultimately in their communities,” said New York City Chancellor David Banks. The Modern Apprentice program is part of CareerWise, a three-year apprentice model created in Colorado based on job training in Switzerland, where apprenticeships are common in most fields. Although students are not guaranteed jobs after the three years, it is possible they could stay with the company or utilize their new skills and experience to secure another job or attend school. 

TENNESSEE —  High School Grad Rate Show Rebounds to Pre-Pandemic Level

Encouraging numbers show Tennessee schools appearing to be successfully recovering from pandemic disruptions as . In a statement, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn credited educators and families for positioning this year’s nearly 65,000 high school graduates to “achieve their dreams and goals.” With the state’s goal of increasing its students’ chances of employment and higher income earning, education leaders believe this is a step in the right direction to get its students to pursue post-secondary credentials or degrees. 

This update on pandemic recovery in education collects and shares news updates from the district, state, and national levels as all stakeholders continue to work on developing safe, innovative plans to resume schooling and address learning loss. It’s an offshoot of the Collaborative for Student Success’ QuickSheet newsletter, which you can .

In states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia, student test scores are climbing back toward their pre-pandemic levels, encouraging those who feel progress being made and worrying many who still see teaching and learning severely depressed by the impacts of closures. 

However, in , student scores show deep learning loss in both ELA and math, in which fewer than a third of students are now proficient. Districts in are reporting scores “plummeting” in every subject, for every grade. And while rolls out a new, “teacher-developed” assessment that makes it difficult to compare new scores to pre-pandemic years, state results show just about a quarter of students scoring proficiently in any given grade or subject. 

The results come as national tests and data  — like the NAEP exam and data gleaned by nonprofit assessment maker NWEA — seemingly confirm the severity of the pandemic’s impact and underscore the need for schools and districts to wisely invest available recovery dollars.

Looking beyond assessments, here are nine other updates from across the country about how states and school systems are confronting the challenges posed by COVID-19 and its variants — and working to preserve student progress amid the pandemic:

WASHINGTON — Hungry for More Student Interest, WA Teachers Test a Free Science Curriculum

The lack of high-quality, engaging, and affordable science curriculum has made it difficult for many states to reach their goals of incorporating and implementing aligned to Next Generation Science Standards, experts and teachers . But, an openly developed and freely available curriculum, could be a game-changer as schools and districts reenergize their focus on science instruction and offerings. Washington is one of at least 10 states encouraging educators to pilot the OpenSciEd materials. This represents a departure from science instruction based on lectures and student memorization of information and toward student-centered exploration, investigation, and discussion. 

TEXAS & TENNESSEE — 2 States Get Tutoring Right, and Model How to Expand it Nationwide

States like Tennessee and Texas have taken the initiative to close achievement gaps, particularly in math, and get students back on track by implementing high-dosage tutoring programs and partnering with Zearn, a top-rated, open-source math learning platform. And though tutoring has risen as a top, evidence-based strategy to accelerate learning, Zearn co-founder and CEO Shalinee Sharma underscores the need for states to support schools, districts, and their teachers by properly vetting tutoring providers, ensuring the availability of aligned and high-quality training, and navigating challenges associated with staffing and scheduling. 

FLORIDA — Only 48% of 5th Graders Passed the State’s Science Exam; Fewer Than a Quarter Were ‘Proficient’

Recent statewide science exam results show a 1 percent increase from 2021 scores and a 3-7 percent decrease from 2012-2019 with 48 percent of Florida fifth-graders passing the 2022 exam, based on a score of 3 or higher. “That means some 5th graders struggling in science are headed into middle schools, where science courses can get harder,” author Danielle J. Brown noted. 

WISCONSIN — Evers Unveils Proposed $2B Boost to K-12 Schools

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers recently proposed  for the 2023-25 state budget. If passed, the additional funds would be invested into literacy-related programs, student mental health aid, and free lunch programs for all students. “After a tough past few years, we know our kids and our families and schools need our help now more than ever to get caught up and to get more educators and staff into our classrooms, and ensure every kid has the support and resources that they need to be successful,” Evers said.

GEORGIA — State’s GEER Funds Confront COVID-19 Learning Loss

Gov. Brian Kemp announced over supporting learning recovery around the state. Organizations included the Georgia Alliance of Boys and Girls Clubs, Georgia Alliance of YMCAs, and Georgia Department of Education, along with many others. “We know there is still more work to do when it comes to recovering from pandemic-driven learning loss in our classrooms,” Kemp said. “That’s why I’m thankful to know that these additional funds — on top of the historic investments we’ve made in K-12 education — will both put students first and help set them on a renewed path of learning success.” The funds are intended to support programs that have been launched in partnership with schools, like community-based tutoring, summer and after-school initiatives, and expanded services for students with special needs.

CALIFORNIA — State May Become 20th State to Mandate Kindergarten

A bill awaiting signature by California Gov. Gavin Newsom , beginning in the 2024-25 school year. Proponents of the bill in the California State Legislature cite research showing strong positive links between early childhood education programs and quality of life indicators, like income, teen pregnancy, and higher education attainment. Alberto M. Carvalho, Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, penned a piece in support of the legislation. (Update: Gov. Newsom just )

INDIANA — New Grant Helps $111 Million Early Literacy Investment

To combat flagging literacy rates, the state of Indiana and Lilly Endowment Inc. using proven teaching techniques that align with the “science of reading,” a collection of research-based strategies that focus on building skill in phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. “I believe this funding will not only better prepare our students for a successful life, but will benefit the teaching profession by offering stipends to those who choose to participate in professional development and providing future educators additional instruction on Science of Reading methods,” shared Jeff Raatz, chair of the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — D.C. Schools Roll Out Program to Improve Student Reading Levels

A new D.C. Public Schools effort called DCPS Readers Next Door is launching in the district this school year, and grow literacy rates. Featuring decodable texts and curriculum aligned to the “science of reading,” the program also lifts up lessons and texts from D.C. authors and educators. The new resources come as the first standardized test scores since the onset of the pandemic shine a light on how deeply learning was impacted by COVID-19 and school closures. This year, 36% of D.C. students scored proficient in reading, a 4% decline since pre-pandemic levels. 

NEBRASKA — Newly Approved Math Standards Put Greater Emphasis on Data, Statistics

In response to a statewide dip in math proficiency, members of the Nebraska State Board of Education . According to state law, districts must adopt the standards or their own set of standards on par with rigor within a year. Cory Epler, the department’s chief academic officer, said he expects districts to use federal relief funds to purchase high-quality math curriculum. “Adopting standards is not enough by itself to raise proficiency. Quality instruction is important as well,” he said.

This update on pandemic recovery in education collects and shares news updates from the district, state, and national levels as all stakeholders continue to work on developing safe, innovative plans to resume schooling and address learning loss. It’s an offshoot of the Collaborative for Student Success’ QuickSheet newsletter, which you can .

This Week’s Top Story

• “We have all been questioning, ‘When does COVID look like influenza?’ ” Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco . “And, I would say, ‘Yes, we are there.’
• “So unless a more virulent variant emerges, COVID’s menace has diminished considerably for most people, which means that they can go about their daily lives,” says Gandhi, “in a way that you used to live with endemic seasonal flu.”
• “We are now seeing consistently that more than 70% of our COVID hospitalizations are in that category,” says Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease specialist at the Tufts Medical Center and a professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine. “If you’re counting them all as hospitalizations, and then those people die and you count them all as COVID deaths, you are pretty dramatically overcounting.”
• “If deaths were classified more accurately, then the daily death toll would be closer to the toll the flu takes during a typical season,” Doron says. “If this is true, the odds of a person dying if they get a COVID infection — what’s called the case fatality rate — would be about the same as the flu now, which is estimated to be around 0.1%, or perhaps even lower.”
• “I’ll probably feel more comfortable saying something like, ‘Oh, COVID is similar to the flu’ when we actually see a pattern that resembles that,” says Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in the division of health policy and public health. “We’re sort of just starting to see that, and I haven’t really seen that in a sustained way.”

The Big Three — September 23, 2022

• “Doughty’s injunction applied to the 24 state governments that acted as plaintiffs in this case,” .
• “These states were: Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.”

• “The pandemic is over,” . “We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing.”
• “Biden’s insistence on Sunday night that the pandemic is over . The declaration was not part of his planned remarks ahead of the 60 Minutes Ÿ±ČÔłÙ±đ°ù±čŸ±±đ·É.”
• ” ‘It is unlikely the U.S. will eradicate the coronavirus, and ,’ President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said Monday during a fireside chat with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.”
• “The White House , dismissing it as the president’s attempt to highlight the administration’s success in beating back the virus. Widely available vaccines and treatments are capable of blunting the worst of COVID’s effects, businesses and schools are open, and emergency health measures have largely evaporated.”
• “Even if the U.S. is technically still in a pandemic, aides argue, Biden was trying to express that .”

‘Wake-up Calls’: New Parent Survey Shows 9% Enrollment Drop in District Schools

• “Districts faced persistent annual enrollment challenges due to a set of factors we call the “Three Ds”: dropouts, demographics and deferments.” As ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ reports, from spring 2021 to spring 2022, a new survey estimates a decline of roughly 300,000 students in district public school enrollment due to these three factors.
• “Parents report their top reasons for changing schools .”
• “In addition, our analysis determined that parents’ political beliefs had little to no impact on their reasons for changing their child’s school. Conservative, liberal and moderate parents alike ranked academic quality and safety as their top motivations.”

City & State News

CALIFORNIA: Via ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ: “California Poll Finds Parents Leaving Traditional Public for Charter Schools.“

• “The poll found a higher percentage of school switches among Democrats, white parents, families with English as a primary language and households earning more than $150,000 per year.”
• “Among parents surveyed that switched their child’s school, the 52% that originally attended traditional public schools dropped to 41% — an 11 percentage point decline. In contrast, the 15% that attended charter schools grew to 23% — an 8 percentage point increase.”
• “38% of parents decided to switch schools because they wanted a different educational experience for their children. The poll also found 31% of parents dissatisfied with COVID-related safety measures at their childrens’ school and 30% dissatisfied with mental health support or one-on-one learning help.”

COLORADO:

• “The curriculum grants come at a time when many Colorado districts are adopting new K-3 reading curriculum to comply with a 2019 state law that requires them to use programs backed by research on how children learn to read,” . “While there’s no similar law covering math curriculum, education department rules say the grants can only be used for certain math programs — specifically, those that earned top ‘green’ ratings from EdReports, a national curriculum reviewer.”

ILLINOIS: 

NEW YORK:  

NORTH CAROLINA: as of Sept. 1, which represents about 3% of the district total. The number is higher for child nutrition workers, where the vacancy rate is 13%.The highest vacancy rate is for school bus drivers, with 30% of positions, or 267 drivers, still unfilled.

OKLAHOMA: 

TENNESSEE: ““

VIRGINIA: Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive directive that aims to address teacher shortages through strategies that include hiring retired educators and targeting recruitment and retention efforts toward communities most in need

WASHINGTON:  Shifting Students: A Look at Washington State School Enrollment from 2020 to 2022: Via

• “There were 16,371 fewer students enrolled in all Washington schools in the 2021-22 school year than in 2019-20.”
• “Enrollment in Washington’s district-run public schools declined 2% per year on average from September 2019 to September 2021.”
• “During the same period, private school enrollment increased by 10% per year on average, enrollment in homeschool increased by 27% per year on average and enrollment in charter schools increased by 28% per year on average.”

Federal Updates

ED: Education Secretary Miguel Cardona sent a clarifying how states should distribute funds from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Priority for funding should go to districts with high rates of poverty and one of the following:

• A high student-to-mental health professional ratio
• High rates of chronic absenteeism, exclusionary discipline, and/or referrals to the juvenile justice system, bullying/harassment, community and school violence, or substance abuse
• Students who recently experienced a natural disaster or traumatic event

Supreme Court to Consider Taking Up Challenge to New York’s Vaccine Mandate:

Resources to Support Governors’ Advisers With Tracking Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Programs: 

COVID-19 Research

CDC Expects Omicron COVID Boosters for Kids by Mid-October: Via .

• “The CDC said in a released on Tuesday that it expects to make a recommendation in early to mid-October on the use of the new bivalent vaccines in the group, if they are authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”
• “The CDC said it expects Pfizer-BioNTech’s, bivalent vaccine to be available for children aged 5-11 years, and Moderna’s vaccine for those aged 6-17 years, pending FDA authorization.”

U.S. Delivers Over 25 Million COVID Boosters: 

• “According to the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, retail pharmacies will be receiving millions more doses of Moderna this week and that production is ramping up.”

Omicron Sublineage BA.2.75.2 Exhibits Extensive Escape from Neutralising Antibodies: on the variant we highlighted back on and

• “In recent serum samples from blood donors in Stockholm, Sweden, BA.2.75.2 was neutralised, on average, fivefold less potently than BA.5, representing the most neutralisation resistant variant evaluated to date. These data raise concerns that BA.2.75.2 may effectively evade humoral immunity in the population.”

Viewpoints

The Case for Curriculum: Why Some States Are Prioritizing It With COVID Relief Funds:

• “A new CCSSO brief details the ESSER spending decisions of those states that are part of the group’s High-Quality Instructional Materials and Professional Development (IMPD) Network. The collective, formed several years before the pandemic, aims to encourage schools to use curricula aligned to state standards and get students engaged in grade-level work.”
• “Advocates for a more standardized, district-led approach say that using the same curriculum across schools can ensure that all students are receiving grade-level work and that lessons progress in a clear sequence, building knowledge and skills as students move through the grades. As some states have urged districts to adopt high-quality materials, they’ve also offered aligned professional development and coaching to support teachers.”
• “Several IMPD network states, including Massachusetts and Tennessee, are using these funds to adopt new curricula or support schools in purchasing core reading and math materials. In some cases, states have introduced a quality-control element: In Nebraska, districts have to pick curricula that are high-quality, which is defined as meeting expectations on the nonprofit reviewer EdReports’ evaluations.”

Confronting COVID’s Lost Generation: Very long and important piece in

New Directory of Innovative School Models Aims to Encourage Experimentation: on the


 And on a Reflective Note

Remembering Queen Elizabeth: as she signs off the BBC’s 11 days of coverage. 

• “She made history, she was history. Queen Elizabeth II has gone, but she will surely never be forgotten.”

Queen Elizabeth II Has Completed Her Final Journey to St. George’s Chapel: Where she will be laid to rest alongside her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. 

For even more COVID policy and education news, .

Disclosure: John Bailey is an adviser to the Walton Family Foundation, which provides financial support to .

The organization says the “Learning Crisis Classroom” was designed to “draw attention to the urgent need to transform education systems worldwide” as widening achievement gaps have left millions of schoolchildren “without foundational numeracy and literacy skills.” 

According to the organization’s preview announcement, “a third of the desks in the model classroom are made of wood and are fully functioning with an iconic UNICEF backpack placed on the school chair behind it, representing the one-third of 10-year-olds globally estimated to be able to read and understand a simple written story.

“The remaining two-thirds of desks are almost invisible and made of clear material to signify the 64 percent of children estimated to be unable to read and understand a simple written story by age 10.” The installation remains up through Monday; read . 

Explore our recent coverage of COVID learning loss

• New Testing Data: Fewer Students in Early Grades Developing Basic Phonics Skills
• Experts Say Kids Are Far Behind After COVID; Parents Shrug. Why the Disconnect?
• ‘Nation’s Report Card’: Two Decades of Growth Wiped Out by Two Years of Pandemic
• Facing Pandemic Learning Crisis, Districts Spend Relief Funds at a Snail’s Pace

Marissa and Kason are using their iPad to train their computerized friend, inputting commands that will guide the robot in taking measurements, calculating angles and then using that information to successfully pick up three blocks, carry them a short distance, and drop them back to the surface. 

The two students have some success with the robot picking up one block, but then run into some obstacles as the simulation unfolds. Their summer camp teacher, Kristen Robinson, comes over to help see if she can offer some insight and guidance. 

More than two years since the pandemic disrupted in-person learning and forced a pivot to virtual learning, particularly in the areas of science and technology, students are back interacting with one another, developing critical social skills that have, at times, gone unused amid laptops, e-mails and Zoom sessions. 

It was something Robinson said she noticed early on working with the students during the multi-day camp. During the camp’s first few days, she says, kids were trying to create codes for their robots and when something in the coding didn’t work, they were growing frustrated. 

The frustration would boil over, Robinson says, and, much to her surprise, they would simply quit. 

“No one’s codes were working. They were wanting it to work. so I kind of problem-solved that a little bit. And shared that with them the next day. And so they used that knowledge to rewrite their code and to get everything figured out. And they’re like, ‘oh my gosh, you’re right. Yeah, it does work.’ 

“Normally, I feel like kids would maybe [persevere] and be like, ‘We’re gonna figure this out, right?’”

But sometimes the right answer isn’t the first answer. That’s why this key lesson — that perfection and proficiency takes time and resilience — is a central part of the process being developed and distributed by the Tulsa Regional STEM Alliance. The organization works with schools, students and others to build the capacity of educators in STEM-related fields.

“It includes districts, of course,” said Levi Patrick, executive director of the alliance, also known as TRSA. “We have relationships with our districts, but mostly through classroom teachers across the region.”

The goal, Patrick said, is to reduce the barriers that are keeping STEM out of individual classrooms, and to make sure that instructors have additional training available to them so they can expand their coursework. “Then, we work with many other people beyond the districts — a lot of our work happens with our community partners, but also workforce [advocates and] employers who really want to make sure that they are investing back into the community,” he added.

Which brings us back to the library at Darnaby Elementary. One pillar of the organization’s work over the past decade (the last five as a nonprofit) has been to provide training, grants and even curriculum to community partners so they can host summer learning programs and expand student access to STEM coursework during the summer months. 

“We’re actually able to serve about twice as many student experiences this summer, just by changing that model,” Patrick said. 

TRSA connects a vast universe of partners — from major school districts to Global Gardens, a program for low-income students to learn about science through gardening. 

“Our goal as an alliance is to find ways to bring in more and more partners who can do this work alongside us,” he said. “We believe collectively there’s a need. We know that there are essentially always students on the waiting list at the summer camps. And we know our small organization can’t do it alone. So as an alliance, our vision is to continue to bring people into the fold, resource them, give them support.”

Tulsa was identified as Oklahoma’s first STEM Community in large part thanks to the extensive partnerships and collaborations available with college, university, district, and nonprofit partners, said Lynn Staggs, TRSA’s chief of staff.

At Darnaby Elementary, that support involved providing 3D printers and VEX robotics materials for the robotics coding and building camps, said MacKensie Mathison, the school’s STEM strategist. 

“Their partnership with Darnaby goes even beyond the singular grant: TRSA went above and beyond to provide us with surgical kits for our biomedical camp when we were struggling to acquire the needed materials through our traditional channels,” Mathison said. “This partnership has also included an engaging curriculum, professional development, contacts with other partners, and amazing items such as the Giant Moon and Mars Maps that were lent out for our NASA camp.”

TRSA staff develop the majority of the student experiences that TRSA offers and implement across the community in an effort to overcome the substantial opportunity gap that still hinders access to STEM for girls and Black, Latino, Indigenous, rural and economically disadvantaged students, Staggs said. 

“This past summer, TRSA provided nearly $30,000 in grant funds to expand access to summer STEM camps,” she said. “A two-day training was provided to ensure partners have a shared view of STEM and how powerful learning opportunities can shape beliefs about student identity, their confidence and competence in STEM, and their view of how STEM is used in their world.”

She added that they plan to expand summer STEM camp learning opportunities over the next few years by working closely with neighborhoods around Tulsa to understand their role in overcoming opportunity gaps that continue to persist.

Employing artificial intelligence, CK-12 engineers programmed Flexi to act as a tutor, responding to math and science questions, testing students’ knowledge, helping with homework and providing real-world examples of hard-to-grasp concepts. 

“Our ambition is to create a private tutor equivalent for every child,” says Miral Shah, chief technology officer for the Palo Alto, California company. “The majority of students could never afford a private tutor, so we wanted to build a private tutor that mimics all the qualities of a tutor. We can help personalize the attention and assess a student’s knowledge continually.”

Flexi can start simple, with a student asking a basic science question within CK-12’s online system, such as: “Does photosynthesis happen at night?” or “Define photosynthesis.” Flexi answers the question and backs it up with content, such as video simulations or real-world examples, Shah says. 

“Ask any question to the Flexi chatbot and it will help answer the question in a way a private tutor will,” Shah says. 

Beyond just doling out answers, Shah says Flexi, which launched in May 2020, assesses a student’s understanding of a concept and suggests next steps, whether a next lesson or flashcards to review. 

Tutoring has emerged as a key strategy for helping students rebound from COVID learning loss, but tutoring resources remain in short supply. President Joe Biden used his recent State of the Union address to urge his fellow citizens . Providing a digital solution to that problem has become a potential growth point for education tech companies. But while CK-12 and others, such as Amira Learning, offer AI-driven tutoring, the concept of online tutoring itself remains relatively new and lacks research to prove its effectiveness. That hasn’t stopped the experimenting. 

Cheryl Hullihen, a special education science teacher at Absegami High School in Galloway, New Jersey, says Flexi has helped her students become more independent in finding answers to questions, while also teaching them how to formulate questions to find both general and specific information about a topic or concept. 

“I think that this is an important life skill for students,” she says. “I always explain to students that I don’t expect them to memorize definitions and equations, but that I want them to be able to find the information that they need to answer a question or investigate a problem. Students are able to see how the way that they ask a question, and the wording of their question, can produce different results.” 

Shah says Flexi’s goal is to support students. That’s why AI is needed. “If a student is struggling, we give them multiple hints,” he says. “If they are still struggling, we show them some flashcards because they are probably getting deterred by vocabulary items. Sometimes they just forget about a concept. The whole idea is to give personalized help to each student. Each student gets different and personalized support.” 

If a student still doesn’t get it, Flexi will alert their teacher.

CK-12 is a nonprofit formed in 2007 with a focus on digitizing education in a way that wasn’t just about turning analog education into accessible online content, but about using the full power of digital, such as with artificial intelligence. CK-12 says have used its free learning tools worldwide, including digital textbooks. 

Starting with math and science because of its universal language, CK-12 content mixes text, multimedia videos, interactive simulations and adaptive quizzes. “That is how we started challenging ourselves in terms of what can digitization do for education,” Shah says. The content remains flexible so teachers can customize it to fit their needs.

The AI-powered student tutor Flexi takes FlexBooks a step further, providing more interaction for the students and additional insight for educators. 

Hullihen says students in her classes use Flexi when working on an assignment in FlexBooks, but they also turn to it for activities outside of that. For example, students were working on a lab investigating potential energy and used Flexi as a resource to find equations and answer the analysis and conclusion questions. Shah says the goal is to provide enough support to get students to the correct answer, but there is no roadblock if a student wants to jump straight to the finished product.   

A byproduct of the constant interaction between the student and the system is feedback for the teachers, a tool that’s become a mainstay of modern ed tech and personalized learning. FlexBooks was designed to allow educators to add it to their curriculum, allowing assignments via FlexBooks through popular online content learning systems such as Canvas. The Teacher Assistant product, designed for educators to work with FlexBooks, tracks student understanding of assignments and delivers data to the teacher on their progress. 

For example, if a bulk of students miss a particular question on an assignment, CK-12 flags that for the teacher, letting them know students didn’t understand the concept. This can help teachers see a deficiency in student comprehension, while potentially helping educators rework curriculum so the same issue doesn’t happen in the future.

“Teachers are excited about the insight piece, getting a chance to see how students are doing in a lesson,” says Kaite Harmon, CK-12’s senior program manager.  

Shah says as students continue to learn digitally, he wants to make the process more relevant. “We have this unique opportunity that nobody has ever had before,” he says. “As a community, I hope we can all pitch into this to get the learning outcomes students deserve.”

While some schools and districts prioritized investments in portable or low-cost air filters and other technology, experts say they may be missing an opportunity to upgrade air and climate systems that could have a measurable impact on students. “If you look at the research, it shows that a school’s literal climate — the heat, the mold, the humidity — directly affects learning,” said Phyllis Jordan, associate director of FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. 

Another federal report indicates over 36,000 schools were in need of air system upgrades even before the pandemic, a number experts say likely climbed during the pandemic. 

Looking beyond relief funds, here are seven other updates from across the country about how states and school systems are confronting the challenges posed by COVID-19 and its variants — and working to preserve student progress amid the pandemic:

INDIANA – Rate of Indiana High School Students Headed to College drops to 53%

Enrollment declines that began before the COVID-19 pandemic are continuing in the Hoosier State, with officials recently . As Chalkbeat reports, state education officials say the pandemic exacerbated the trend, with enrollment declining 1.8% or 110,000 students. “One of the questions that we just have to come back to is, just where are those kids?” said Heather J. Hough, executive director of the Policy Analysis for California Education. “We don’t have satisfying data to answer that question.”

MAINE – Gov. Janet Mills Announces $12.3 Million Expansion of Statewide Apprenticeship Programs

Maine schools are expected to more than double the number of apprenticeship programs available for students while also doubling the number of businesses and companies sponsoring the opportunities. The more than , including health care, construction, plumbing, heating/ventilation/air conditioning, welding, shipbuilding and marine, and engineering, and could increase the number of students graduating school debt-free, credentialed, and employed. “Apprentices in Maine, who completed their program in the last two years increased their wages, on average, by nearly 40%, even during the height of the pandemic,” said Gov. Janet Mills.

MISSOURI — Rural Explosion in Four-Day School Week Aimed at Recruiting Teachers

A quarter of all school districts in Missouri , largely as a result of districts working to recruit and retain teachers amid a growing national teacher shortage. Officials across the state say four-day weeks have made recruitment easier in hard-pressed rural communities, but signal that low teacher salaries and increasingly challenging teacher work conditions continue to ratchet up the challenge of hiring and keeping talent.

NEW JERSEY — State Creates Path for More Prospective Teachers, as Shortages Grow

Earlier this month, New Jersey passed a suite of changes in hopes of guiding more teaching candidates into the profession and into classrooms. Most notably, the changes would allow candidates who did not score sufficiently on licensure tests or earn sufficient grade points averages to enter a coaching pilot via the alternative licensure program. In response to some concerns that the move could lower standards for incoming teachers, State Board member Nedd James Johnson said the changes will remove barriers that have been preventing qualified applicants to enter the field.

ARKANSAS — Gov. Hutchinson Supports Proposal to Raise Minimum Salaries of Teachers to $46,000

Arkansas lawmakers sent a number of education bills to Governor Asa Hutchinson’s desk alongside a record K-12 budget recently as the state legislature adjourned. The expanded state budget , while a series of legislation would expand resources for classroom supplies, open new routes to licensure for teacher candidates, and set controversial rules on classroom discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation.

MICHIGAN – Financial Literacy Requirement Becomes Law for Michigan Students

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a new law . The move lends to a trend of schools nationwide increasingly trying to widen access to financial literacy courses for students. “As a mom, I want every kid who graduates in Michigan to enter the world with a diverse set of skills and knowledge, and that must include financial literacy,” Whitmer said in a written statement.

TEXAS — Dallas Sees Positive Results in First Year of Discipline Reform

A transformation of Dallas Independent Schools’ disciplinary policies has already seen encouraging success, say school and district leaders. The opening of 60 “Reset Centers” staffed with trained professionals was aimed at working through issues with students before situations result in suspensions, says Superintendent Michael Hinojosa. The initiative required roughly $4 million in federal recovery funds to implement, but has already resulted in over $2 million in cost savings .

This update on pandemic recovery in education collects and shares news updates from the district, state, and national levels as all stakeholders continue to work on developing safe, innovative plans to resume schooling and address learning loss. It’s an offshoot of the Collaborative for Student Success’ QuickSheet newsletter, which you can .

As , while Congress placed relatively few strings on the cash, lawmakers did specify that at least 20% of school and district funds must be targeted to address learning loss — a number to meet the challenges faced by students. Yet as states review district allocations, some are rejecting plans or asking for more information that investments will be evidence-based and proven to move the needle on student academic achievement, causing lengthy delays that are drawing the ire of state and federal officials. 

“Bureaucratic hurdles should not get in the way of student recovery,” said an Education Department spokesperson. “States should [be] doing everything they can to get these badly needed resources into the classroom and helping students recover.”

Looking beyond relief funds, here are nine other updates from across the country about how states and school systems are confronting the challenges posed by COVID-19 and its variants — and working to preserve student progress amid the pandemic:

MICHIGAN — Gov. Whitmer Seeking to Invest in Large-Scale Tutoring Initiative

Despite not including tutoring as a piece of the state’s plan for federal COVID relief funding, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is designed to address widespread learning loss. As Chalkbeat reports, officials are pointing to increasing evidence that tutoring is the among the most impactful interventions for accelerating and making up learning time, including new research from Harvard’s Thomas Kane.

ARIZONA – $100 Million K-12 Investment Sees Summer Camps Expanding Across State

A $100 million investment in summer programming in Arizona means there are for students this summer, say state officials. The AZ OnTrack Summer program is a pillar of Gov. Doug Ducey’s strategy for investing pandemic relief aid and helping students and teachers make up lost learning and instructional time. Some programs, like in the Scottsdale Unified School District, are targeted to the youngest learners, who experts say often have the greatest need. “Very few of them know what it means to last a whole year in school without it being interrupted by COVID,” said Alice Spingola, a Scottdale ESSER Coordinator. “This is very beneficial for our students. These students more than any other grade level really need that head start.”

NORTH CAROLINA — Pandemic Remote Learning Set Back Student Progress

Students in North Carolina are from where’d they be without the effects of the pandemic, according to a report released by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The study suggests learning loss was sharper for students in schools that kept instruction remote for longer. 

TEXAS — State to Resume Accountability Practices Linked to State Testing

Texas officials set in place to monitor student achievement and school performance. Schools and districts will be given an A-C letter rating based on how students score on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR exam. Schools that earn a D or F rating will be listed as “Not Rated” and have the opportunity to take action to improve scores for the following academic year. “STAAR results allow parents, teachers and schools to see how individual students are performing so they can better support those students moving forward,” Frank Ward, a TEA spokesperson said.

FLORIDA — State Reading Test Results Show Decline in Proficiency for Third-Graders

Just over 53% of Florida third-graders passed the state’s annual reading assessment, roughly the same as the results from last year, when tests were reinstated after a pause during the pandemic and faced challenges with weakened participation. The results represent about a 5% decline in proficiency from 2019, the year before the pandemic shuttered schools. Despite half of students “passing,” only 1 in 4 scored proficiently. Another quarter of students earned a Level 1 score, the lowest, which could lead to higher rates of students being held back or requiring additional interventions and services.

MISSOURI — State to Implement Summer Programming with ARP Funds

The Missouri Education Department has made over $20 million in federal American Rescue Plan dollars this year. Officials say that the funding will enable large districts to expand existing programs to accommodate more students, while many smaller and more rural districts may be able to implement summer offerings for the first time. 

MINNESOTA — Lawmakers Pass $93 Million to Address Rise in Mental Health Crises

A last-minute vote in the Minnesota legislature saw the passage of a suite of mental health resources, , that lawmakers say will help address the sharp rise in mental health crises seen in communities during the pandemic. A portion of the funding is meant to establish “mental health urgency rooms” that will seek to alleviate pressures on emergency services and provide safety for teens and students in particular. 

OREGON — Auditors: State Lacks Accountability Measures to Ensure Efficient Use of Funds

As Oregon receives an influx of funds, in place to monitor spending. Auditors are urging state officials to put measures in place that hold schools and districts accountable for the outcomes of the students they serve. “State leaders need to monitor how the agency itself is performing and intervene when necessary to ensure student success does, in fact, increase,” auditors said.

COLORADO — Lawmakers Tout Significant Increase in State Education Budget:

Through a series of bills recently signed by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, in the Centennial State just two years after the pandemic forced a significant cut to state budgets and programs. Changes to the state education budget mean per-pupil expenditures across Colorado will increase by 6% to as much as 40% for students who receive special education services.This update on pandemic recovery in education collects and shares news updates from the district, state, and national levels as all stakeholders continue to work on developing safe, innovative plans to resume schooling and address learning loss. It’s an offshoot of the Collaborative for Student Success’ QuickSheet newsletter, which you can .