The Post-Pandemic Teaching Loss

Schools were given $190 billion in federal money for Covid safety measures and to help students catch up, and many have poured funds into tutoring or other programs. Then why are test scores still lagging? A new report suggests that pandemic learning loss is being exacerbated by teaching loss.

School administrators say that “their recovery plans have proven nearly impossible to successfully implement, primarily due to staffing and training challenges,” according to researchers at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, who interviewed leadership from five public charter and traditional school districts. All the systems said classroom teaching had suffered, “which meant improving day-to-day instruction had to be their top priority.”

The most disheartening part of the report is the direct quotes from school leaders on everything from an “erosion of professional expectations” to teacher turnover:

• “We spent a lot of money on retention bonuses and ‘please stay’ payments. You might as well burn that money because it didn’t bear out. People left anyway. People took their checks and walked.”

• “There are a lot of teachers [who] reverted to . . . traditional practices. There are a lot more teachers just delivering content and kids being very disengaged.”

• “How are we doing with teacher rustiness and rigor? Not good.”

• “There’s . . . a lot of, ‘we’re just getting through the day and . . . that’s all we’re doing.’”

• “Teacher appetite for engaging in professional learning outside of the school day [has not returned. Teachers] really just aren’t attending.”

• “We are still experiencing some challenges with just staying on pace. Even though the pace has been revised and revised and revised.”

Remote teaching is as dispiriting as remote learning. Thirty-seven percent of public schools reported on a federal survey last year that teacher absenteeism had increased “a lot.” The pandemic put a pause on classroom observations and collaboration. “The ‘learning acceleration’ models that many district leaders expected would catch students up required advanced teaching strategies,” the report says, “and were thus difficult to achieve when many teachers needed help reviewing the basics.”

A December report from Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research found that schools often had difficulty finding staff or targeting the students most in need of tutoring and other supplemental learning services. “The simple-sounding logic of academic intervention,” the authors said, “belies a host of complex design and implementation decisions.”

Meantime, not all the Covid money was spent on academic help. A new report from The 74 website finds that some districts “pumped millions of dollars into major classroom additions, upgrading athletic fields and other expenditures unrelated to the pandemic.” A Utah system spent $86,000 on a summer teachers conference at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Other districts used Covid funds for regular expenses, and one made a payment on a state loan.

School shutdowns were among the worst decisions made during Covid, and the academic recovery isn’t coming as promised. No wonder parents are seeking help outside of public schools.