“This is the biggest problem facing America,” Jens Ludwig, a University of Chicago professor, said flatly. Nonetheless, he told those assembled at the Washington, D.C., event sponsored by the , a think tank, “We do not have our hair on fire the way it needs to be.”

That disconnect is the subject of a new released Monday that further explores what many have labeled an “urgency gap.” To pinpoint the extent of the gap, the authors talked to parents about the signals they’re getting from teachers and schools about their children’s progress. Parents expressed little concern about lasting damage from the pandemic and typically thought their children were doing well in school — a view that researchers say is belied by dismal state and national test scores. 

The issue is “genuinely vexing,” said Morgan Polikoff, an associate education professor at the University of Southern California and the paper’s lead author.  

“Parents are overwhelmingly getting the message from grades and teachers that kids are doing fine-to-great,” he said. He attributes that upbeat outlook to how little parents pay attention to standardized test scores — the “external measures” that matter most to researchers. “We just never heard anything about standardized tests from the folks we interviewed.”

The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed historic declines in math and flat performance in reading. According to this year’s spring test results, pandemic recovery remains elusive for some states. Several have continued to lose ground in reading and most have not surpassed pre-COVID performance in math. Last week’s release of international scores show U.S. students dropped 13 points in math between 2018 and 2022. 

Ludwig argues that U.S. students have made such little progress that the $190 billion Congress appropriated to address the COVID crisis is insufficient and lawmakers should find to fund high-dosage tutoring.  

“If we don’t remediate this pandemic learning loss, this cohort of 50 million kids will experience reduced lifetime earnings of something like $900 billion,” he said.

Those messages, however, don’t always get to parents. 

Given the gauntlet of tests schools administer, it’s easy for parents to get lost, said Meredith Dodson, executive director of San Francisco Parent Action, a group that advocated for schools to reopen and has recently pushed for improvements in the district’s reading program.

For many parents, “​​it’s hard to understand all the acronyms — this test versus that test, the state versus the national,” she said. “Parents just really want to trust their teachers. Is my kid on grade level or not?”

Even some parents who knew their children’s standardized test scores tended to put more stock in grades, Polikoff found. One parent interviewed for the study knew that a majority of students scored higher than her son on the NWEA MAP test in math. But, she said, “his knowledge is much greater than that” because he received a 3 on a scale of 1-3 on his report card, which “means they’ve achieved the mastery or whatever.” 

Researchers have documented  between grade point averages and , especially since the pandemic. from three organizations — EdNavigator, Learning Heroes and TNTP — showed an increase in B grades since the pandemic even among students who performed below grade level and were chronically absent.

‘Kids are not stupid’

Schools have also made it easier to do well, a vestige of pandemic-era incentives to get students to complete their work. Dan Goldhaber, director of the CALDER Center at the American Institutes for Research — and the father of two school-age children — said he’s increasingly “astounded” at how many chances students get to bring up their grades.

“Kids are not stupid,” he said. “They’re going to learn that, ‘No, I don’t need to study real hard for this test because I can just correct it after the fact.’”

It’s not a surprise, he added, that there’s been a lackluster response to some academic recovery efforts. A lot of districts have spent relief funds on less-effective remediation efforts, such as optional on-demand tutoring. And those companies typically get paid whether or not students improve or even use the service, according to . 

In response to disappointing results, some states and districts have shifted course. A few have with large online tutoring companies. Some have turned to “outcomes-based” contracts — in which tutors earn more money for better results. But others are sticking with . 

If districts are going to spend funds on tutoring, Goldhaber said, officials should “have some control over” which students receive the help and when it’s delivered.

He and Polikoff are among the experts urging educators to make test score data a much larger focus of their conversations with parents. And there’s some evidence that hard facts about students’ scores can be a wake-up call.

A November showed that among parents who knew their children were below grade level in math, improving those skills became their number one concern, more important than curbing the effects of social media and protecting them from bullies.

Being honest with parents starts at the top, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of Education Policy Studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 

“Superintendents should not say, ‘We’re chugging along. We’re going to get there.’ They should say this is a huge problem,” he said at the Aspen event. Teachers, he added, need “political cover” to tell parents their children are behind. “It’s the truth and we need to deliver it.” 

But the news doesn’t always go over well. When Precious Allen, who teaches second grade at Betty Shabazz Academy, a charter school in Chicago, showed parents test results that indicated their children were a year or more behind, she said they grew “flustered” and complained about doing extra review sheets with their children after work. 

It was tough, she said, for them to “wrap their minds around” the data. She shared passages from that explains where children should be for their age to help parents understand how the pandemic threw their kids off track. “I had to bring a lot of science and research into it because sometimes the voice of a teacher is not enough.”

‘Worst possible time’

But not all educators believe assessments provide valuable or reliable information. Polikoff sees the separation between parents and the nation’s education scholars as part of a larger anti-testing movement that started brewing long . The pandemic pause on state assessments and accountability sparked a to limit the number of tests and try .

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, for example, is leading a to remove the state test as a graduation requirement, calling it “harmful.” The proposal drew sharp criticism from National Parents Association President Keri Rodrigues, whose organization trains parents to advocate for quality education.

“This is the dawn of a new era, where high school diplomas now become participation trophies,” she wrote in an . 

Testing critics complain that assessments take up too much instructional time and that the results rarely benefit teachers because they arrive after students have already moved on to the next grade. Others say high-stakes tests are racially biased against Black and Hispanic students. 

“There’s just very close to zero constituencies advocating for tests or that they matter,” Polikoff said. Republicans, he said, “want only unfettered choice” while the left is not defending the usefulness of tests “to ensure educational quality or equity.”

’The backlash against testing, he said, has come “at the worst possible time given the damage that’s actually been done.”

And those that offered mostly in-person learning during the first full school year of the pandemic not only lost fewer students but were more likely to recover enrollment the following year, according to the paper, released Monday from the American Enterprise Institute.

The analysis shows that enrollment loss was not just “pandemic-related; it was pandemic-response related,” said Nat Malkus, a senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy at the conservative think tank. The same, he said, applies to the decline in achievement chronicled in recent National Assessment of Educational Progress results.

“The idea that this is behind us is just absolutely wishful thinking. The consequences are very real,” he said. “Some say you’re going to wear your audience out by saying ‘learning loss, learning loss.’ But if we had learning gains of the same size, how many headlines would we be looking at?”

The study confirms a pattern that researchers at Stanford University identified and takes it a year further to show that families didn’t come flooding back to districts once they reopened. Now, almost three years after the pandemic began, more districts face the possibility of because of that enrollment loss. And some have used federal relief funds to in their budgets resulting from lost students. That means the so-called “fiscal cliff” will be even tougher when funds dry up in two years, Malkus said. 

Preliminary for this school year are just beginning to trickle in from the states, and so far the outlook is mixed, according to Burbio, a data services company. Hawaii enrollment declined for a fourth straight year. After a rebound last year, enrollment in is down 1%. Delaware and Arkansas have seen small increases of less than 1% compared to last year, while enrollment is up 1.3% in North Dakota. 

It’s important to note, Malkus said, that urban districts that were closed the longest and had the most enrollment loss were also steadily losing students before COVID. The pandemic just accelerated that loss.

Those who moved their children to new schools during the pandemic might also be reluctant to make another change even if their lives returned to relative normalcy, Thomas Dee, a Stanford University economist who led last year’s research, wrote in a recent . 

That seems to be the case for those who enrolled in charter schools. from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools showed that the large gains during the 2020-21 school year have “held steady.”

Growth in pre-K

While districts lost students in middle and high school, leaders’ decisions to stay remote in 2020-21 placed “larger burdens” on families with children in the early grades and drove them to search for alternative schools that offered in-person learning, Malkus wrote in his report.

Young children, however, are now contributing to some enrollment growth. Data compiled by Burbio, shows that boosted enrollment last year in multiple districts, from Trenton, New Jersey, to Provo, Utah. In others, pre-K enrollment softened the blow of declines. For example, in Rochester, New York, enrollment would have been down 4.4% last year without pre-K. Instead, it decreased 2.5%. 

also partially accounts for an enrollment increase in the District of Columbia Public Schools this year, even though experts .

The impact of early-childhood programs on K-12 enrollment is particularly evident in California, now in the first year of a statewide expansion of transitional kindergarten, a program for 4-year-olds offered in elementary schools. 

A from the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that 4-year-olds eligible for the program will account for almost half of enrollment growth in districts through the 2025-26 school year. 

Some districts, such as those in , opened their transitional kindergarten classrooms ahead of schedule, likely to prevent further enrollment decline. And the program is one reason why enrollment loss this fall in is roughly half of what officials forecasted.

To Dee, it makes sense that districts offering early learning programs have seen an uptick. 

“As people become comfortable accommodating (or simply ignoring) COVID-19 risks,” he said, “the families of rising cohorts of young students are likely to be more willing to reconsider public schools.”

But he doubts that enrollment in pre-K and the early grades will be enough to offset the substantial losses districts saw two years ago. That’s because many families moved out of those districts altogether. In his op-ed, he wrote that the “pandemic is fundamentally reshaping the broader economy,” with more parents working from home and high housing costs pushing families out of urban areas.

Even if districts attract new families with young children, that won’t solve district-wide problems, Malkus added. “You’re not going to fill your second-grade classrooms with pre-K kids.”

Calling it a “significant encroachment,” the Supreme Court on Thursday that would have impacted about a quarter of the nation’s school districts and potentially contributed to further staff shortages.

“Permitting [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] to regulate the hazards of daily life — simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock — would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization,” the opinion said.

The court’s three left-leaning justices, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented, arguing that the decision “stymies the federal government’s ability to counter the unparalleled threat that COVID–19 poses to our nation’s workers.”

As schools struggle to handle COVID-19 outbreaks amid staff shortages, the U.S. Supreme Court Friday heard a lawsuit over an employee vaccine mandate that some experts suggest could stretch districts even thinner.

In November, President Joe Biden that employees in organizations with at least 100 workers be vaccinated or wear a mask and test weekly. The requirement applies to about of the nation’s public school teachers and staff members, after factoring in the several states that have already imposed their own vaccine requirements for district employees.

The plaintiffs, 27 states and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, sued the U.S. Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, arguing that the mandate — set to go into effect Monday — would create a “labor upheaval” and that many employees will quit rather than comply. The plaintiffs asked the court to block the mandate from being implemented, and a ruling on that could come as early as this weekend.

“This is going to cause a massive economic shift in this country,” said Scott Keller, representing the businesses. He and Ohio Solicitor General Ben Flowers argued that states and Congress — not OSHA — have the authority over public health regulations and that COVID-19 transmission is a risk everywhere, not just in the workplace.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, speaking for the Biden administration, stressed that “grave danger exists” when people gather indoors together, which they are more likely to do at work.

The hearing took place as other challenges to vaccine mandates — for both educators and students — move through the legal system. The San Diego Union School District’s vaccine mandate is facing two challenges, one of which also awaits a response from the Supreme Court. And a federal judge in Louisiana last week blocked the Biden administration’s requirement that all Head Start staff be vaccinated by the end of January. 

Even the judge in that case expects the administration to appeal.

“This issue will certainly be decided by a higher court than this one,” Judge Terry Doughty, of the Western District of Louisiana, wrote in his ruling. A Trump appointee, he argued that the Biden administration has overstepped its authority and the mandate could make it difficult to keep classrooms fully staffed.

“If the executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the legislative branch to make laws, then this country is no longer a democracy — it is a monarchy,” he wrote.

‘Thousands of people dying’

In Friday’s oral arguments on the OSHA case, members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority also questioned the the legality of the agency’s mandate.

“This is something that the federal government has never done before,” said Chief Justice John Roberts.

But the more liberal justices focused on case and hospitalization rates.

“By this point, we know that the best way to prevent spread is for people to get vaccinated,” said Justice Elena Kagan. “We are still confronting thousands of people dying every time we look around.”
On Wednesday, there were more than 700,000 new cases in the U.S. and more than 1,500 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The , however, has declined since the Delta surge in September.

According to Nat Malkus, an education policy expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the mandate would directly apply to districts in 26 states that have their own OSHA plans. But even in those states that are exempt, it could “change the calculus for districts” and make them more likely to require vaccines or regular testing if most other employers in their communities are already enforcing the mandate. In the 24 states directly under OSHA authority, state and local employers are not included.

He noted that if the court opens the door to OSHA having broad authority in this case, it will be “harder to close it in the future,” and would strengthen the government’s argument in the Head Start case. 

While some children turn 5 while in Head Start, most in the federal preschool program for children in poverty, are still too young to be vaccinated. Children are less likely to become seriously ill from COVID-19. But with Omicron leading to higher positivity rates and recent in pediatric COVID-related hospitalizations, medical experts have stressed the importance of surrounding young children with family members and caregivers who are vaccinated.

The National Head Start Association, which represents Head Start families and programs, is calling for a compromise between the administration’s hard-line position and the 24 states that sued over the mandate. The rule also requires children ages 2 and up to wear masks.

“Face masks and vaccinations play a critical role in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in early care and educational settings. But the rule wants it all one way and the lawsuit wants it all the other way,” Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the association, said in a statement. “Head Start leaders are seeking the middle ground, where local programs have the flexibility to work within local guidelines to keep classrooms open and ensure children don’t lose access to crucial services because of a mandate that is impossible to operationalize.”

‘The uphill effort’

But district leaders are concerned about the immediate impact of vaccine mandates on the classroom. 

“It will make shortages worse and exacerbate the uphill effort to get and keep schools open and kids in schools,” Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director for advocacy and governance at AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said about the OSHA rule.

As they monitor court rulings regarding vaccine mandates for employees, school districts are also watching decisions regarding students.  

The Supreme Court is expected to decide before Jan. 24 whether to hear the case of a pro-life student from Scripps Ranch High School in the San Diego district who objects to human cell lines being used in the testing and creation of the COVID-19 vaccines. Cell lines, developed in laboratories and commonly used to manufacture vaccines, come from fetuses aborted decades ago. 

The mandate applies to students 16 and up. Students who don’t comply would be enrolled in remote learning.

“The irony about the mandate is that teachers are allowed to get religious exemptions, but students, who are at far lower risk [from COVID-19], are not,” said attorney Paul Jonna, who represents the plaintiffs.

In a separate San Diego case, the district plans to appeal a superior court judge’s decision . Let Them Choose, an advocacy organization, argues that only the state legislature or public health department — not districts — have the authority to mandate childhood vaccinations. The law also allows parents and students to opt out for personal beliefs. 

Two advocacy organizations made the same argument over the Los Angeles Unified School District’s vaccine mandate for students, which has been delayed until fall. In December, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to block implementation of the mandate.