CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Educators know about the “summer slide,” the term used to describe the learning kids lose when they’re away from school on summer vacation.
The same phenomenon can apply to the learning lost during the coronavirus pandemic, but education researchers haven’t been able to gather complete data on the extent of the problem. With many students still out of school and dealing with the effects of the pandemic, experts might not be able to gather the data to get a nationwide, or even statewide, picture. So while individual districts may be able to gauge how their students are doing, there’s no big-picture look.
That’s important for making policy decisions, and as a community, knowing where to put resources. Many parents use standardized testing as a marker for how well students are matching up with state standards.
But standardized testing was canceled in the spring, and experts say testing this fall could have some flaws. The Ohio Senate introduced a bill to file an exemption with the federal government, to allow more time for districts and students to stabilize before testing. That will likely not happen, as the Department of Education pre-empted those requests with public statements that there will be no waivers this year.
So now, tests are still on the horizon. But do those really assess how an individual student is doing during the pandemic, soothing frazzled parents’ nerves about learning loss?
Experts say standardized testing, which parents are familiar with as a benchmark, combined with formative testing, which happens in classrooms -- and online -- throughout the course of the school year, will provide a complete picture. Teachers take responsibility for formative testing, using quizzes, activities and other tools to regularly assess a student’s progress.
“Many teachers have a fairly good grasp right now of what’s going on, and the kind of learning loss that’s happening,” said Indiana University associate professor David Rutkowski. “That would be at an individual, school level, where the teachers are able to gauge and maybe even teachers with experience can go back to previous years and look back at scores on tests that they’ve given in the past to be able to gauge that.”
That doesn’t mean looking at the report card at the end of the year, which looks back on student progress. Formative assessments should allow teachers to immediately assess a student’s progress and allow them to adjust learning to the student or class.
Jacob Burgoon, an assistant teaching professor at Bowling Green State University’s College of Education and Human Development, said he’s implemented formative assessments in his own online classes. There are different tools that teachers use, like Flipgrid, where students can take quizzes and do minute presentations on what they’ve learned and have conversations. Teachers can monitor that to see how students are engaging and how well they’re learning material.
“Those kinds of formative assessments, I think, are the key because, number one, they are quicker to administer,” Burgoon said. “Students that have been out of the classroom for a long time, when they come in, and then you give them a standardized test, I think they’re gonna be like, ‘Oh, right, I remember why I hate school.’ There’s the motivational aspect right there. Secondly, they seem less threatening, and they’re more open for teacher feedback. The teacher is going to respond to the task the student just did and can help them immediately.”
Education publication EdWeek surveyed 12 education assessment and instruction experts and came to the same conclusion: immediately testing students when they return to the classroom after an extended absence can be overwhelming. Instead districts should focus on assessing through teaching and avoid using tests as “gatekeepers.”
Schools also use diagnostic tests to see how well students are performing to the state standard, which could provide information when compared to previous years. The Ohio Department of Education released a test bank of questions previously used in state tests for districts to use for assessments. The difference here is that using these banks of questions aren’t as “high stakes” as standardized testing, which can have profound effects.
Standardized tests, aside from informing a student’s path, are usually a factor in teacher evaluations and district report cards. This year, the Department of Education clarified that certain types of student data shouldn’t be used in teacher evaluations, if given. District report cards were issued this year, but didn’t contain any standardized testing data because of the canceled tests in the spring.
“Teachers and administrators far too often end up confusing scale scores with a student’s capacity to learn,” Council of the Great City Schools leaders wrote in restart guidance. “Based on standardized assessment data, teachers place kids into high or low ability groups or provide low levels of instructional rigor to lower performing students. This is not an effective strategy for addressing unfinished learning, and not an appropriate use of assessment data.”
Instead, the council recommends using assessments as “temperature checks,” for how students are doing. Cleveland schools CEO Eric Gordon, who serves as council chair, previously spoke to how the pandemic could prompt the district to unlink time from progress, moving toward a model where grades are viewed as bands with learning benchmarks rather than strict years.
Accountability for teachers and schools is often closely tied with standardized testing, but the pandemic revealed layers of how schools need to operate.
Andrew Ho, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said first schools need to keep tabs on students who may have disconnected and make sure they’re engaged and physically healthy. Then, schools must deal with how kids are doing socially and emotionally. Without understanding those components, it’s difficult to use tests to assess learning loss because the baseline is not the same.
Rutkowski said it’s likely students, no matter the learning situation, will experience some kind of negative impact this school year. Early projections from organizations showed a potential jarring learning loss from the pandemic, with testing organization NWEA projecting that students might return to school with 75% of the learning they would have otherwise had in English, and as little as 50% in math. Now, projections aren’t shaping up to be as drastic as initially thought, Ho said.
On an individual level, Rutkowski said parents should make sure their students are staying engaged and talk to them about learning, but also remain in constant contact with teachers.
“The standardized assessment is another check, it’s another indicator, but it’s truly the teacher who has the best idea about the student’s learning,” he said. “These people are professionals. This is what they’re paid to do and this is what they’re paid to understand.”
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November 16, 2020 at 06:00PM
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How much has the coronavirus set kids back in school? It’s difficult to quantify, experts say - cleveland.com
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