A case of the possible: Creating the Conditions for K-12 Student Achievement Growth in the Face of COVID-19

Gilmore, S., (2024)

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Abstract:

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, and the school closures that swept the United States from early 2020 through 2021, grave concerns have been raised about the effects on K-12 education. Now that the dust has begun to settle, recent analyses by policy research centers and organizations like the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) have begun to quantify the effects on student achievement, and to consider the future implications of widespread learning loss. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has shown that from 2019-2022, the average public school student in grades 3-8 lost around half a year of progress in math, and a quarter of a year’s progress in reading (Harvard University Center for Education Policy Research, 2023), and a recent report states that from 2019 to 2022, public schools in the United States lost 40% of the past 20 years’ progress in increasing math and reading achievement (Kane et al., 2022). If not recovered, this decline is estimated to result in a loss of almost $20,000 in lifetime earnings per student, or $900 billion dollars for all K-12 public school students enrolled in during the 2019-2022 academic year (Kane et al., 2022).

While it is clear that these economic losses will most negatively impact students already disadvantaged by income and racial disparities (Office for Civil Rights, n.d.), recent analyses are beginning to reveal a landscape in which the impact of COVID-19 on student outcomes does not appear to be the product of individual or household factors like race or income. Instead, it appears that levels of learning loss are most variable between districts as opposed to within them, suggesting that, in addition to community-level factors like local COVID-19 death rates and poverty status, “the cause of achievement loss was likely due to district level differences (such as school resources, the quality of remote instruction, or the level of disruption in district classrooms),” (Fahle et al., 2023).

In light of evidence that COVID-19 impacts are likely to be more localized than previously understood, we can look to the experiences and outcomes of individual school districts to explore how district-level factors have influenced student achievement. One small, largely blue-collar, urban public school district in southern New England – District A – may provide an example of what Shulman (Shulman, 1999) would call “the possible”: a district that, despite these community factors, has shown significant resilience in the face of COVID.

The findings from this case study not only suggest answers to these questions, but have implications beyond District A: If sustained student achievement growth during COVID-19 is possible, what can we learn from this case that might go beyond supporting recovery from the next event of great social adversity, but resilience in the face of it?