Long Term Learning Effects of COVID

 A topic that will not be going away anytime soon is the effect that the COVID shut down has had on education. Here in California, many students were out of school for almost a full two years, and the impact that this had on their education varied depending on a number of factors: location, socio-economic status, parent involvement, access to wifi, number of students in the household, etc.  A number of my own students admitted that they would log into their classes and then walk away from the computer, fall asleep, or just not pay attention. Our district did not require the students to turn on their cameras during distance learning. This was partly due to the socioeconomic status of many of our students; some of them were doing distance learning in bathrooms or closets. 

Because of the lack of consistency of education, many of the students are behind, and some of them were already behind before the pandemic.  Even beyond the initial impact of the closure that occured in March, the lasting effects are showing in the data, especially in math and English. According to Kuhfeld, et. al (2022), this gap is upwards of 20% in high vs low poverty students,  and they noted, "Further, achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020 (both overall and differentially by school poverty), indicating that disruptions to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures." 

As we move further out, it is important to try to bridge these gaps, but also to recognize that they are nobody's fault. This pandemic was unprecedented territory. The importance of social emotional learning is on the rise. According to Jasmine De Leon (2022), "70% of public schools reported that 'the percentage of students who have sought mental health services increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic;' and that 34% of public school students seeking out mental health services more than others were 'economically disadvantaged students.' The second highest percentage (25%) of public schools who sought out mental health services more than others were special needs students (25%)." Learning to balance the focus on SEL with bridging the academic gap is something we are all learning, but it is so important. Unhealthy children cannot learn. Unhealthy adults cannot teach them. We are all in this together.