During normal summers, researchers expect students to lose small portions of the information they learned the previous school year; but the Northwest Evaluation Association released a report in April projecting significant learning losses in some subjects when students return in the fall of 2020 – thanks to what they are calling the “COVID-19 slide.”
For example, in mathematics, the report projects students will return with “less than 50% of the learning gains,” while some grades may be nearly “a full year behind what we would observe in normal conditions,” the report says.
Declines tend to be steeper for math than for reading, and retention losses increase for students in the upper grades, NWEA researchers said in the report.
NWEA made several recommendations based on modeling of the “COVID-19 slide.” Those recommendations are as follows:
- Policymakers, educators, families, and communities should further their work to provide support, especially in mathematics, to students while school is disrupted. Making sure that students and families can get access to the internet, technology and engaging mathematics and reading materials is key to helping students address the losses they could otherwise suffer due to COVID-19.
- To guide curriculum and instruction to support students, educators will need data. To get that data, the NWEA suggests a collaborative effort among stakeholders to collect and interpret data t hat could be useful.
- Researchers, policymakers and schools should work together to understand potential policies and practices for recovery. School, communities and families are already working together to support children, through online learning, homeschooling, providing additional support when school returns and in other ways. The NWEA says that collaborative, timely research will help those in schools to recognize patterns and “define potential policy for our schools’ recovery that can be expanded throughout the United States in a timely manner.”
