7 ms·

Schools Are Back and Confronting Devastating Learning Losses

24 points by bilsbie 4y ago

sieabahlpark 4y ago
Almost like keeping them home for two years wasn't the best idea.
- xadhominemx 4y ago
  I don’t think that’s the right takeaway from the study. Learning loss was barely different in the South vs the Northeast (and worse vs the West) despite more aggressive reopening, and cities had no learning loss despite reopening last. I think there was learning loss for the same reason there’s been a spike in crime - the pandemic was highly disruptive to routines and mental health, whether or not your school was open.
  - mancerayder 4y ago
    Crime is up because laws changed. Let's please not try to armchair psychoanalyze crime trends and reduce it to 'disruption.' In New York State, they completely reformed sentencing, and in NYC, progressive DAs and judges are trying everything to avoid sending people to jail (no bail) or prison (diversion first) EVEN in violent and gun crimes.
    - lesuorac 4y ago
      I didn't know NY set laws for the rest of the country as well. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myths-and-realities-understanding-recent-trends-violent-crime https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth...
      - mancerayder 4y ago
        Absolute rubbish cherry-picking of facts and figures. Arguing repeatedly that 'there is no evidence for...' in respect to criminal justice reform and increased crime rates in part of the article, but then makes loosey goosey conjectures about things like trauma from COVID-19 and lack of sidewalks; uses murder stats liberally but doesn't mention the 50 percent increase in violent crimes; points to gun stats but declines to point out that progressive DA's use diversion programs for gun possession, which is essentially like decriminalization of guns. The list goes on. Not mentioned above is the indisputable fact in crime statistics that a very small percentage of the population commits a disproportionately large amount of the crime, especially violent crimes. If you put 2 and 2 together, and remind yourself that the criminal reforms removed in NYS the dangerousness consideration for bail, it's pretty obvious that repeat criminals are allowed to go on sprees. It's bearing out every day in headlines, and the breakdown of trust in the society is because quite simply: you're rubbing shoulders with violent and unhinged people on a daily basis in NYC. I'll take my down votes with glee here. That's the Zeitgeist : denial by the current crop of people in power. And the pendulum will swing back in a few years, as it does.
        xadhominemx 4y ago
        You completely ignored the relevant argument, which is that crime is up everywhere in the country
    - xadhominemx 4y ago
      Crime is up across the country, though
      - sieabahlpark 4y ago
    - galdosdi 4y ago
      Yeah, that is probably a factor to some degree. I don't doubt it. But the more salient one probably is the social climate of rapidly increasing public distrust, desperation, not giving a shit about each other in society, the zeitgeist as it were. These kinds of wooly vague things do really matter, you know. For example: Do you remember the 2004 northeastern blackout? Of course you do. A third the US/Canada population was without power for a day or two. Nothing terrible happened, no rioting or anything. A lot of observers were amused, relieved by this, because the last big NYC metro area blackouts in the 1970s immediately triggered severe rioting. And clearly, the zeitgeist was quite different in 2004 than in the "End of Growth" supply-crunched 1970s. Considering how dramatically the national mood was shifted by the pandemic, I would not actually be surprised if the rise in crime was largely caused by that. Another example: Did you know violent crime and rioting are significantly more common in the summer than winter? A statistical fact that goes back a long, long time. I advise not being so quick to dismiss the effects of such things, even if they seem more abstract and less simple to understand. The world isn't simple.
  - daveslash 4y ago
    Agreed completely. Not to mention: "maybe it wasn't the best idea" _completely_ brushes aside the potential results of having kept them in schools. Keeping them at home obviously had/has its challenges. And if we had to go through this again, perhaps there are ways to improve - but to offer only the snark "maybe it wasn't the best idea" is neither very helpful nor insightful.
    - sieabahlpark 4y ago
- silent_cal 4y ago
  "Um actually" copers incoming.
- janef0421 4y ago
  Much of this learning loss is probably more attributable to a lack of systemic preparation for remote learning, rather than an inherent issue in remote issue. That didn't have to be the case; Concerns about a major respiratory pandemic have been around for two decades, so there was plenty of time to put plans in place to handle a shift to remote learning. If that had been done, learning loss would be massively reduced.
- kurupt213 4y ago
  They have to feign surprise
eimrine 4y ago
Thomas Edison has claimed that inventing of video is the greatest innovation in learning. What has gone wrong?
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  One factor, among many, I strongly believe, is the difficulty of maintaining and enforcing attention on the learning material on most any device a student would be using. I certainly have this problem. A second issue, as I see it, is the collapse of expectations in terms of evaluation ("grading"). We don't want to make a students anxious ==> grades are unfair/adversarial ==> allow retakes/change or remove evaluation methods/etc. This may seem tangential, but the students are not incentivized to pay attention, which is how I see this point relating to your very good question. I could go on, but I only get more negative from here. I think there has been a subtle, but wholistic change in the way we think about educating our kids, especially around a degradation of expectations. Kid's can get away with quite a lot, especially if we don't reinforce the behavior that will actually incentivize "real" learning.
  - galdosdi 4y ago
    > allow retakes This is a nitpick but if done right (eg, avoid cheating, such as by making up a slightly different exam for each retake) retakes not only don't hurt mastery-based learning, but improve it dramatically. Since the whole point of a class is to learn the designated material, it seems silly that exactly when during the semester you finally figured it out has any bearing on the final grade, as long as you did learn and master the skills and/or content at some point before the end of the semester (and demonstrate that you did so). And, this encourages kids to see school as a game where as soon as a unit is over the knowledge they gained no longer matters, and it devalues perseverance. Worse, without retakes, tests/projects become more high stakes, subtly encouraging teachers to make the standards slightly more "forgiving." With retakes in the mix, it's easier to keep the bar where it should be, because there's no penalty for failing and trying. There has been and still is a serious lack of focus on making grades actually measure "Did they learn the material?" but the influences you talk about have neither improved nor degraded that situation. For that matter, a kid who failed to learn multiplication in elementary school, but who managed to fully catch up and even ultimately master algebra in 9th grade, should not be penalized for their previous "failures" (which honestly, were probably failures of their prior teachers in this particular example, since elementary math ed is just so bad in the USA) as long as they did eventually rectify them. After all, they're going to graduate high school knowing just as much as the kid who learnt the things on the official schedule. The official schedule has little to do with reality and everything to do with practical school operational logistics and a lack of imagination. In order to be able to set high expectations, we have to get away with our obsession with meeting those expectations on a fixed schedule. The natural result is that the expectations slide to conform to the schedule, not the other way around.
metadat 4y ago
Archive link: https://archive.ph/5WkhH https://archive.ph/5WkhH
fdewrewrewf 4y ago
Where I live (Wales, UK), a recent report examined school attendance since the start of the pandemic. Not only does attendance continue to decline in the high single digits, the affect on the worst-off in society is truly devastating. The decline there is in the medium-high double digits (Table 3 in linked article). https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2022-04/attendance-review-implications-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-for-school-attendance.pdf https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2022-04/a...

24 points by bilsbie 4y ago

sieabahlpark 4y ago

Almost like keeping them home for two years wasn't the best idea.

xadhominemx 4y ago
I don’t think that’s the right takeaway from the study. Learning loss was barely different in the South vs the Northeast (and worse vs the West) despite more aggressive reopening, and cities had no learning loss despite reopening last. I think there was learning loss for the same reason there’s been a spike in crime - the pandemic was highly disruptive to routines and mental health, whether or not your school was open.
- mancerayder 4y ago
  Crime is up because laws changed. Let's please not try to armchair psychoanalyze crime trends and reduce it to 'disruption.' In New York State, they completely reformed sentencing, and in NYC, progressive DAs and judges are trying everything to avoid sending people to jail (no bail) or prison (diversion first) EVEN in violent and gun crimes.
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    I didn't know NY set laws for the rest of the country as well. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myths-and-realities-understanding-recent-trends-violent-crime https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth...
    - mancerayder 4y ago
      Absolute rubbish cherry-picking of facts and figures. Arguing repeatedly that 'there is no evidence for...' in respect to criminal justice reform and increased crime rates in part of the article, but then makes loosey goosey conjectures about things like trauma from COVID-19 and lack of sidewalks; uses murder stats liberally but doesn't mention the 50 percent increase in violent crimes; points to gun stats but declines to point out that progressive DA's use diversion programs for gun possession, which is essentially like decriminalization of guns. The list goes on. Not mentioned above is the indisputable fact in crime statistics that a very small percentage of the population commits a disproportionately large amount of the crime, especially violent crimes. If you put 2 and 2 together, and remind yourself that the criminal reforms removed in NYS the dangerousness consideration for bail, it's pretty obvious that repeat criminals are allowed to go on sprees. It's bearing out every day in headlines, and the breakdown of trust in the society is because quite simply: you're rubbing shoulders with violent and unhinged people on a daily basis in NYC. I'll take my down votes with glee here. That's the Zeitgeist : denial by the current crop of people in power. And the pendulum will swing back in a few years, as it does.
      - xadhominemx 4y ago
        You completely ignored the relevant argument, which is that crime is up everywhere in the country
  - xadhominemx 4y ago
    Crime is up across the country, though
    - sieabahlpark 4y ago
  - galdosdi 4y ago
    Yeah, that is probably a factor to some degree. I don't doubt it. But the more salient one probably is the social climate of rapidly increasing public distrust, desperation, not giving a shit about each other in society, the zeitgeist as it were. These kinds of wooly vague things do really matter, you know. For example: Do you remember the 2004 northeastern blackout? Of course you do. A third the US/Canada population was without power for a day or two. Nothing terrible happened, no rioting or anything. A lot of observers were amused, relieved by this, because the last big NYC metro area blackouts in the 1970s immediately triggered severe rioting. And clearly, the zeitgeist was quite different in 2004 than in the "End of Growth" supply-crunched 1970s. Considering how dramatically the national mood was shifted by the pandemic, I would not actually be surprised if the rise in crime was largely caused by that. Another example: Did you know violent crime and rioting are significantly more common in the summer than winter? A statistical fact that goes back a long, long time. I advise not being so quick to dismiss the effects of such things, even if they seem more abstract and less simple to understand. The world isn't simple.
- daveslash 4y ago
  Agreed completely. Not to mention: "maybe it wasn't the best idea" _completely_ brushes aside the potential results of having kept them in schools. Keeping them at home obviously had/has its challenges. And if we had to go through this again, perhaps there are ways to improve - but to offer only the snark "maybe it wasn't the best idea" is neither very helpful nor insightful.
  - sieabahlpark 4y ago
silent_cal 4y ago
"Um actually" copers incoming.
janef0421 4y ago
Much of this learning loss is probably more attributable to a lack of systemic preparation for remote learning, rather than an inherent issue in remote issue. That didn't have to be the case; Concerns about a major respiratory pandemic have been around for two decades, so there was plenty of time to put plans in place to handle a shift to remote learning. If that had been done, learning loss would be massively reduced.
kurupt213 4y ago
They have to feign surprise

eimrine 4y ago

Thomas Edison has claimed that inventing of video is the greatest innovation in learning. What has gone wrong?

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
One factor, among many, I strongly believe, is the difficulty of maintaining and enforcing attention on the learning material on most any device a student would be using. I certainly have this problem. A second issue, as I see it, is the collapse of expectations in terms of evaluation ("grading"). We don't want to make a students anxious ==> grades are unfair/adversarial ==> allow retakes/change or remove evaluation methods/etc. This may seem tangential, but the students are not incentivized to pay attention, which is how I see this point relating to your very good question. I could go on, but I only get more negative from here. I think there has been a subtle, but wholistic change in the way we think about educating our kids, especially around a degradation of expectations. Kid's can get away with quite a lot, especially if we don't reinforce the behavior that will actually incentivize "real" learning.
- galdosdi 4y ago
  > allow retakes This is a nitpick but if done right (eg, avoid cheating, such as by making up a slightly different exam for each retake) retakes not only don't hurt mastery-based learning, but improve it dramatically. Since the whole point of a class is to learn the designated material, it seems silly that exactly when during the semester you finally figured it out has any bearing on the final grade, as long as you did learn and master the skills and/or content at some point before the end of the semester (and demonstrate that you did so). And, this encourages kids to see school as a game where as soon as a unit is over the knowledge they gained no longer matters, and it devalues perseverance. Worse, without retakes, tests/projects become more high stakes, subtly encouraging teachers to make the standards slightly more "forgiving." With retakes in the mix, it's easier to keep the bar where it should be, because there's no penalty for failing and trying. There has been and still is a serious lack of focus on making grades actually measure "Did they learn the material?" but the influences you talk about have neither improved nor degraded that situation. For that matter, a kid who failed to learn multiplication in elementary school, but who managed to fully catch up and even ultimately master algebra in 9th grade, should not be penalized for their previous "failures" (which honestly, were probably failures of their prior teachers in this particular example, since elementary math ed is just so bad in the USA) as long as they did eventually rectify them. After all, they're going to graduate high school knowing just as much as the kid who learnt the things on the official schedule. The official schedule has little to do with reality and everything to do with practical school operational logistics and a lack of imagination. In order to be able to set high expectations, we have to get away with our obsession with meeting those expectations on a fixed schedule. The natural result is that the expectations slide to conform to the schedule, not the other way around.

metadat 4y ago

Archive link: https://archive.ph/5WkhH https://archive.ph/5WkhH

fdewrewrewf 4y ago

Where I live (Wales, UK), a recent report examined school attendance since the start of the pandemic. Not only does attendance continue to decline in the high single digits, the affect on the worst-off in society is truly devastating. The decline there is in the medium-high double digits (Table 3 in linked article). https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2022-04/attendance-review-implications-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-for-school-attendance.pdf https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2022-04/a...