SC students experienced significant learning loss during pandemic, study finds
The coronavirus pandemic brought swift and dramatic changes to traditional K-12 education as it swept across the country last year — and learning in South Carolina schools has suffered as a result.
A study commissioned by the state Department of Education that compared last fall’s MAP assessment scores to scores from years past found pronounced learning loss among younger students, especially in mathematics.
MAP tests are computerized assessments that about half of South Carolina school districts administer throughout the year to measure achievement and growth in subjects like math, reading and language usage.
The study’s findings mirror research the NWEA, an academic assessment organization that creates the MAP test, published in November showing most students nationally had made gains in both reading and math since the start of the pandemic, but that math growth was less than in a typical year.
Education Analytics, a Wisconsin-based company that specializes in crunching education data, reached similar conclusions after analyzing MAP scores for S.C. students in grades 4 through 10 at 30 South Carolina school districts.
“The main purpose of this is to identify where students would have been without COVID, and where they are with COVID,” Britt Wilkenfeld, of Education Analytics, told the state Board of Education last week during a presentation of her findings. “Scores are lower than what would have been predicted without COVID.”
The greatest learning loss among South Carolina students was seen in fourth and fifth graders, both in English Language Arts and math. Sixth, seven and eighth graders scored about on par with past years in ELA, but fell behind in math. Ninth graders didn’t see any loss in ELA or math during the past year and 10th graders actually scored higher in ELA and math than in typical years, the study found.
The greater losses in math are likely due to the skill-specific nature of the subject, researchers said.
If a student has not grasped a basic math concept, they will struggle until they master that foundational skill. Reading, on the other hand, is something students refine continuously through practice.
While that tends to mean students may fall further behind in math than in ELA, it also means they can catch up more quickly once they develop those basic skills.
Education Department spokesman Ryan Brown said his agency’s major takeaway from the study was the importance of fundamental, face-to-face instruction for students in lower grades.
“Those early grades are very critical and we can’t afford to let those kids fall any further behind,” he said.
In-person learning vs. remote learning
Education Analytics attempted to measure the difference in learning progress over the course of the fall semester between students in grades K-9 who tested in person with those who tested remotely, although a number of caveats in the data made that more difficult to assess.
For one, only the student’s testing environment (in-person or remote) is known, not their learning environment. While the study assumed there was overlap between the two, it’s possible some remote learners tested in person and some in-person learners tested remotely.
The study also isolated students who took the fall assessment remotely, but took the winter assessment in person. In such cases, it’s not clear whether the change in testing environment (remote to in-person) is indicative of a change in learning environment, or when in the semester that assumed change in environment occurred.
Another data complication involves what are believed to be unreliable scores for some remote learners, who may not have been as closely monitored while taking the test as those who took it in school. As a result, remote learners, especially in the lowest grades, scored higher than expected.
Caveats aside, the study found kindergarten and ninth grade students who tested in-person — a proxy for face-to-face learning — were at or above expectations in math by winter, but that all other grade levels scored lower in math than in pre-COVID times.
In-person testers in grades 5 through 9 achieved ELA scores on par with pre-COVID expectations, but those in lower grades failed to meet those expectations.
Students who took the standardized assessments remotely — a proxy for virtual learning — generally scored lower than in-person testers, except in the lowest grades. The surprising finding for K-2 students, Brown said, is believed to be due to those youngest remote learners getting help on the assessments from their parents.
The Education Analytics study also measured learning growth between fall and winter assessments, to see whether in-person testers experienced greater learning recovery than remote testers.
The expectation that in-person testers would see more growth in their scores was borne out in the data, although the findings are complicated by the potentially inflated scores of remote testers. Since initial fall test scores may be inflated for remote testers, it’s difficult to assess how much, if any, learning progress they actually made over the course of the semester.
While students who took the assessments in person showed more growth than remote testers on the whole, many still declined from fall to winter, particularly in ELA, according to the study.
“We’ve got work to do. Our children suffered,” state schools chief Molly Spearman said at last week’s state Board of Education meeting. “There are some areas where they have grown since they’ve been back in school, but clearly the data shows that those students who are virtual are not doing as well as in-person learning, and even those who are in-person learning, we’ve got several months of work to catch up on.”
The state is in the process of providing districts an analysis of their students’ test scores and will require each district to craft an academic recovery plan using the data to address any learning losses, Brown said.
State education leaders plan to use a large chunk of the nearly $900 million they’re receiving from the federal government for COVID-19 relief to help boost student learning recovery.
“We’re putting plans together now with districts on how are we going to spend our money in an efficient way to hire interventionists, have expert program days, more time on task, to do whatever is necessary to get our students caught up,” Spearman said.
The use of academic recovery camps for K-3 students, which the state funded last summer to offset COVID-related learning losses, produced mixed results.
Education Analytics found that kindergartners who participated in the camps significantly outperformed their academic peers who did not attend the camps on subsequent fall and winter math and reading assessments.
But first and second graders who attended the camps did no better, and in some cases did worse, than their peers who skipped the camps. Third graders who attended the camps scored higher in math than their peers who didn’t attend, but did no better in Reading, the study found.
“We need to be looking, and we are, as to why (summer reading camps) are not working,” Spearman said. “And we need to try something stronger and different because we still have struggling readers.”
As of Friday, 682 South Carolina public schools had reopened five days, face-to-face, 553 schools were using a hybrid model — a mix of in-person classroom instruction and online virtual learning — and 31 schools remained fully virtual.
Both Spearman and Gov. Henry McMaster have encouraged all districts to return to in-person instruction as soon as possible, citing studies that found COVID-19 transmission in schools was very low.
“I could not say this back in the summer, because we honestly did not know what was going to happen,” Spearman said. “But I can say in full confidence now, schools can operate safely, and they’re probably one of the safest places to be, and we want our folks to get back.”
State lawmakers have also made clear their desire for schools to return to in-person instruction.
The Senate last week passed a joint resolution to prioritize the vaccination of educators in an attempt to accelerate the return of classroom learning, although it’s not clear whether the House will adopt the measure and McMaster has called the plan a bad idea.
This story was originally published February 16, 2021 at 9:29 AM with the headline "SC students experienced significant learning loss during pandemic, study finds."