Key Points

It has been well documented that school closing due to the pandemic caused students to lose ground (see here and here). Recent polling suggests that parents are very concerned about this learning loss and want political leaders to focus on this issue.

Consider this from The74Million.com:

Matt Hogan, a partner at Impact Research, said that it was striking to see Republicans seize an edge on an issue that “has historically been one of the Democrats’ strengths.” 

“There’s just a perception that Democrats’ focus on education is not where voters want it to be, which is helping kids make up the ground they lost,” Hogan said. “They think both parties are too focused on race and gender issues in schools, rather than focusing on catching kids up — but notably, they think that is true of Democrats even more so than Republicans.”

Notice that voters are not saying other issues, such as race and gender, are not important, just that learning loss is more important. Yet as we survey the political landscape, very few politicians or candidates are talking about what parents are most concerned about. 

Perhaps this is because there is no magic wand that can be waived to fix the problem. There is no list of “five easy steps to catch your kids up, and number four will blow your mind.” There are, however, things that can and should be done immediately.

Recently, Harvard economist Tom Kane produced a study of the impact of learning loss and proposed solutions. Kane’s research found that one-on-one tutoring was effective, but not effective enough to eliminate the learning loss for students in schools that were closed most of the 2020-2021 school year. Schools, he said, should plan on implementing learning recovery strategies for multiple years. Kane said:

So what can schools and districts realistically be expected to do in this situation? 

We can’t be thinking of this as a one-year catch-up. If we really are committed to making students whole and eliminating these losses, it’s going to be multiple years. There are other interventions that have been shown to have effects, it’s just that no single intervention gets you all the way. 

In March, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 which included substantial funding for education. However, only 20% of those funds are required to be spent on recovering learning loss. Kane suggests districts spend more than 20% or perhaps all of their ARPA funds on learning loss recovery:

We try to put the scale of the [learning] losses and the amount of aid that districts have received in the same scale. We report both as a share of an annual school district budget, which I think is a useful starting point for thinking about what it’s going to cost a district to recover. If a district has lost the equivalent of, say, 22 weeks of instruction as a result of being remote, and you’re asking what it’s going to cost to make up for that, the lower bound of the estimated cost would have to start with [the question], “What does it cost to provide 22 weeks of instruction in a typical school year?”

We think that’s a useful starting point for people, and what they’d see is that in the high-poverty districts that were remote for more than half of 2021, the amount of aid they received is basically equivalent to — maybe a little more, but not much more than — the magnitude of their losses in terms of instructional weeks. That just means that, rather than spending the 20 percent minimum that was required in the American Rescue Plan, some districts should be thinking that they’ll need all of that aid for academic catch-up.

Imagine how much better off our society would be if politicians and school leaders truly committed to not only eliminating the pandemic learning loss, but using those interventions to insure every student is on grade level. How wonderful would that be?

Imagine how much better off our society would be if politicians and school leaders truly committed to not only eliminating the pandemic learning loss, but using those interventions to insure every student is on grade level. How wonderful would that be?

Additionally, empowering parents to choose a school that best fits their child, be it traditional public school, tuition-free charter school, private school, or homeschool, should also be a tool we deploy to help get kids caught up. 

Polling has made it clear that parents want learning loss recovery to be a high priority for their child’s school. In this election year, candidates and elected officials would be wise to make this an issue in their campaigns. Parents should demand this of their candidates, and then hold them accountable to eliminating learning loss for every student. 

Imagine how much better off our society would be if politicians and school leaders truly committed to not only eliminating the pandemic learning loss, but using those interventions to insure every student is on grade level. How wonderful would that be?