Now, three organizations are working with students in LAUSD high schools to increase the district’s college enrollment, with strategies such as helping students write college essays, hear from professionals, and be mentored through high school into college. 

Despite a 2.5% increase between the  and  school years, LAUSD had just a  in students attending four-year colleges between the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 academic year.

LAUSD college counselors are faced with a daunting task – letting students know about their post-graduate options and helping them get there. An obstacle they face, said college counselor Tricia Bryan, is ensuring students are aware of how to reach their goals.

“I would like to see a little bit more support in the alignment between career and college so that students have a better understanding of what their pathways can possibly be,” said Bryan, the only counselor at John Marshall High School. 

“Usually students will say, I want to go to a good college or get a good job, but they don’t really know what the pathways are for that.”

College Path LA brings in volunteers to assist Bryan to help with applying to college. Roughly half of John Marshall High School students attend a four-year college while the other half attend junior college, she said. 

A key element of College Path LA is essay writing. Mentors help students with their essays while also providing guidance beyond the college process, often checking in on students as they attend college. 

Because John Marshall High School is located in the heart of Los Angeles, a city full of writers, lawyers, and other professions, College Path LA utilizes these people as a source for students. 

 conducted by UCLA and Claremont Graduate Institute found only 25% of those LAUSD students graduated within six years.

LAUSD A-G Intervention and Support provides resources for the college application process, focusing on those who need additional intervention to complete the A-G requirements, which allow students to apply to California State Universities and UC schools. More than half of the students in the program reported learning about college majors, academic requirements for college admission, and financial information. 

UCLA EAOP, “expands postsecondary education opportunities for California’s educationally disadvantaged students,” working to take students beyond the minimum requirements for college admission, with 72% enrolling in 4-year institutions. 

But UCLA EAOP officials say there is still value in attaining a community college degree. 

“What many families still don’t know is that their son or daughter can attend a community college for free for two years after graduation,” said Hugo Cristales, a first-generation college graduate and associate director of UCLA EAOP.

The organizations – ,��, and  – differ in their methodologies and missions, but have the shared goal of ensuring LAUSD high school students are ready to apply to college and get the assistance they need. 

This article is part of a collaboration between ����Ӱ�� and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

But as much as Arthur is concerned about the heightened amount of time students spend in the digital world since the start of the pandemic, he knows screen time is here to stay.

“It’s an unusual problem because we can’t take it away from them,” said Arthur, who teaches sixth grade at Meadowlark Elementary School in Salt Lake City. “The world just doesn’t work like that anymore. They have to use technology.”

Arthur isn’t the only one who sees it this way. Researchers, parents and teachers are finding that even as youth screen time has shot up as a result of the pandemic, it’s time to reframe how we think about it.

Teachers like Arthur are finding ways to deliberately and innovatively embrace technology in their lessons, knowing students will find it more engaging.

Arthur said that he utilizes simulations on Minecraft, a popular video game for youth, as a way for students to learn about ancient civilizations. But he also emphasizes balance and makes sure all math instruction is on paper. That way, children can have a tactile learning experience, as well as a break from screens, he said.

Managing screen time should be guided by whether technology is displacing time that should be spent in other areas, such as exercising, play dates with friends or sleeping, said Dr. Dave Anderson, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York City.

“Making technology into some sort of boogeyman” should be left in 2018, Anderson said. The focus now should be on helping children and adolescents healthily engage with technology.

“This idea that it’s hard for kids to get off screens, it’s true of the entire human population,” he said. “What we try to do is put in the same behavioral safeguards with children as we do with adults.”

He suggested rewarding children who are able to get off of screens quickly, and putting time limits on technology that include warnings when time is almost up.

Prior to the pandemic, children were more comfortable in traditional classroom settings with pencils and paper, teacher Arthur said, adding that now, there’s a noticeable ease that falls on the room when children are able to use devices in lessons.

There’s a “chill familiarity,” he said, where they sit back, loosen up, and have an easier time talking to each other. Not only do they comfortably utilize chat functions, he said, but they also seem more free to make in-person conversations because holding the device puts them at ease.

“When they had to leave school, school became a more foreign place and even in some ways a scary place because it was synonymous with sickness and risk, so they understand ‘I’m not 100% safe in this place, but I’m super comfortable on this device because I’ve been using it nonstop,’” Arthur said. “It’s familiar. It’s the one thing that transcended through the pandemic. It brought the whole world to them when they were stuck at home.”

With children exhibiting so much more comfort in digital spaces, and skyrocketing screen time (one study found kids and adolescents doubled their recreational screen time during the pandemic), experts have also been raising the alarm on how this might impact child development, especially when it comes to in-person socialization skills, such as facial expression control, polite conversation and active listening.

But there’s another side, said Anderson.

“To act as if kids are not developing social skills online is fallacy because what we all know is that email voice, text voice, the ability to interact effectively over Zoom or chat are integral to the modern workplace,” Anderson said. “You need both.”

Anderson said some behavioral issues, such as shorter attention spans, are not an irreversible side effect of too much screen time—the screen itself has not inherently decreased attention spans.

“It’s because the screen itself is so interesting and vibrant in the stimuli that it’s presenting. It can be difficult for kids who are spending a lot of time on screens to then have the practice of being in the real world, paying attention to stimuli that are much less fast paced,” Anderson said.

Arthur knows the problem of demonizing screens, instead of working with them, all too well.

When classes were online, he had a student who didn’t log on for two days. When he called the student’s parents to check in, he discovered the student had his laptop taken away as a punishment.

Taking the laptop away may have solved one problem, but it created another, forcing the student to miss out on essential learning.

“They said ‘we don’t know how to keep him on just the school stuff because he keeps going on the other stuff, so our only answer is to take the whole thing away,” Arthur said. “And that’s our dilemma. We have to understand the technology enough as adults to figure out how to let in the good and keep out the bad.”

“There was a lot of disruption in actually providing quality instruction to students whether it is access to a teacher, a live teacher, or the mode of learning was chaotic and vacillating, and it ,” said Commissioner Peggy Carr of the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the institute. “This is an important way to understand the impact of the pandemic on our country.” 

The School Pulse Panel is a series of surveys from January 2022 through May 2022 measuring COVID-19’s impact on public education. The surveys were sent to 800-850 public schools, with principals, administrators, superintendents, and staff responding. Here are some takeaways from IES’s School Pulse Panel:

1. COVID-19 negatively affected student’s development

A May 2022 survey found more than 80% of public schools reported “stunted behavioral and socioemotional development” in their students because of the COVID-19 pandemic,” a 56% increase in “classroom disruptions from student misconduct,” and a 49% increase in “rowdiness outside of the classroom.” All schools surveyed reported a 55% increase in “student tardiness.” The use of cell phones, computers, or other electronics when not permitted for all schools increased by 42%.

2. Chronic teacher and student absenteeism has increased

Student and teacher absenteeism in the 2021-2022 school year increased in comparison to school years before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 2021-2022 school year 61% of public schools also reported it is “much more difficult” to find substitute teachers; and that

• 74% reported having “administrators cover classes.” 
• 71% reported having “non-teaching staff cover classes.” 
• 68% reported having “other teachers cover classes during their prep periods.”
• 51% reported “separate sections and classes… combined into one room.”

Carr said she had heard from colleagues in Boston and Florida school districts that because of staffing shortages, superintendents had to return to classrooms to teach “because it was so bad. I had heard that, but to see it in a nationally representative sample of schools that prevalent, is sobering.”

Carr also said COVID quarantines are a factor in student absenteeism. “It is normal to have students out because of quarantine, so when we talk about student absenteeism, it’s not all just because a student is just out, sometimes it is that they’ve been quarantined because of COVID,” she said. “That’s part of the new normal.”

3. There is a greater need for mental health services among students and staff.

70% of public schools reported that “the percentage of students who have sought mental health services increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic;” and that 34% of public school students seeking out mental health services more than others were “economically disadvantaged students.” The second highest percentage (25%) of public schools who sought out mental health services more than others were special needs students (25%).

“The teachers are having a rough time…too, is what these data are showing,” Carr said. 29% of public schools reported that the “degree to which staff have sought mental health services from the school since the start of COVID-19” has increased. “They are overworked, they don’t have the staff there to help them, teachers are quitting. They are having to teach courses they have not taught before. All of these things culminate into an unhealthy work environment for the teachers,” she said.

4. Public schools face barriers to getting students the mental health services they need.

Most public schools (61%) said a limitation was “insufficient mental health professional staff coverage to manage caseload,” 57% of the schools said it was “inadequate access to licensed mental health professionals,” and 48% said “inadequate funding.”

“A licensed professional is expensive,” Carr said. “Too few professionals are available in these schools to actually provide those services and inadequate access to licensed professionals that can really provide the level of quality of services that they need.”

5. Schools changed their calendars to support students and staff

Nearly one third of the schools — 28% — surveyed reported making changes to their “daily or yearly academic calendar to mitigate potential mental health issues for students and staff.” In early July, went into effect to make high school and middle classes start no earlier than 8:30am. , New York, and Massachusetts lawmakers have had similar discussions about making school start times later.

6. Most schools are in-person 

By May 2022, most schools — 99% — were offering full-time in-person instruction, a slight increase from January when it was 97%, the survey found. In January, 40% of all public schools also offered a full-time remote option, which decreased to 34% in February, 33% in March, April, and May, the survey found.

7. School Breakfast and Meal Programs faced challenges.

Nearly 40% of the schools that operate USDA school and breakfast meal programs, “reported challenges obtaining enough food, beverages, and/or meal service supplies.” The top three most reported reasons for these challenges were “limited product availability,” “shipment delays,” “orders arriving with missing items, reduced quantities, or product substitutions.”

“I think we are continuing to be surprised by the range of experiences that schools are having to deal with as a result of COVID. It hasn’t subsided,” Carr said. “It is not over yet is what I believe these data are saying.”