Time to rise: State analysis shows how far performance fell during pandemic
Image from the video in the newly released report: The Impact of Lost Instructional Time from the COVID-19 Pandemic in the State of Missouri.
It’s as severe as the education community feared.
Lost instruction time during the many months of virtual and distance learning took a significant bite out of the academic performance of Missouri students.
Click images to enlarge the tables. This chart shows the difference between projected and actual test performance of Missouri students in grades 5 through 12. A comparison of 2018-2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020-2021 shows a significant drop in actual performance. The negative results in 2020-2021 were significant, according to SAS Institute analysts.
The impact fell harder on low-income students and students of color. Math performance overall suffered most, but English Language Arts performance also fell.
The negative impacts were sharpest in math.
An analysis by the SAS Institute for the state of Missouri analyzed performance on state tests to project what would be the expected growth in students’ academic performance from the prior year, then compared the projection to actual performance.
Though not as severe as math, performance in English Language Arts also suffered
The study compared the student outcomes from 2018-2019 — the last school year before the pandemic — to the outcomes in the 2020-2021 school year.
The decrease in performance, the study noted, was significant.
Students that qualified for free lunch and Black and Hispanic students were more likely to suffer performance loss. One of the reasons, the study suggested, is that students in those categories more often attended districts that shut down school buildings for longer periods of time.
Students who are Black tended to suffer the greatest performance loss among Missouri students during the pandemic, and other minorities also suffered steeper losses compared to white students.
Those same categories of students also were more likely to have fewer supports at home — for Internet connectivity and digital literacy, and other family stresses that impact learning such as housing stability and financial strains.
Call to action
Missouri students who qualified for free or reduced-price lunches suffered significantly greater performance loss than other students.
School systems are using federal pandemic stimulus funds to increase learning supports such as reading and math specialists. And support programs, like LINC’s Caring Communities, which works with several Kansas City-area school districts, have taken on increased roles to aid families and children.
LINC’s after-school programming support for children has combined with the broader community supports in helping families secure housing, get federal relief with past-due rent and utility bills, and access food resources.
The key to recovery, said Hedy Chang, founder and executive director of Attendance Works, will be a collective effort to have as many children as possible in class, every day, comfortable and ready to learn.
Everyone, from bus drivers to school greeters, secretaries, teachers, counselors, para-professionals, volunteers, after-school programmers, families and community partners have to rise to this occasion
“It’s all built on having those relationships that are so essential to positive conditions for learning,” Chang told a virtual audience in the Attendance Works webinar, Ensuring a Welcoming, Healthy and Restorative Start to School.
The pandemic demanded a difficult response from an education system and American communities that were already strained by an epidemic of chronic absences.
“As a country,” Chang said, “the pivot was too much for us.”
By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer