While the coronavirus pandemic has affected nearly every aspect of our lives, it has profoundly impacted students and their learning. According to one report, nearly 272,000 New Jersey K-12 students had “fallen behind” within the past academic year. Our education system has never seen or managed through a challenge this daunting.
The term “falling behind” wrongly puts the responsibility on the student, when in reality, it is the education system that now must prioritize finding and filling the gaps in students’ learning.
The term also overgeneralizes and oversimplifies the problem, which can dangerously lead to overly general and overly simple solutions. Disparities in student learning existed long before the pandemic, and they have been exacerbated by the difficulties it has brought on. Fortunately, the conversation around learning loss has shifted to learning acceleration, and while educators seem to agree on this approach, we haven’t reached consensus on what to do about it.
Learning acceleration considers where students are as they advance in grade levels from elementary school to high school, addressing gaps as they occur rather than looking backwards and focusing on remediation. This shift in thinking prevents students from being brought back to a grade level or subject matter in which they last demonstrated proficiency. Backward-looking instruction is not only ineffective, but also carries other unintended consequences for our students, with some studies linking being held back to elevated high school dropout rates.
Here is what we believe:
Learning acceleration is a process, not an event, that occurs when educators rely on the guiding principles of providing equitable access to a robust and viable curriculum, focusing on a K-12 accelerated learning cycle and depth of instruction and incorporating social and emotional well-being in the classroom.
Lesson planning with equitable access in mind accelerates learning because it considers the fact that all students learn at varying speeds. Students are stressed enough without having to worry about keeping up with their classmates. Planning needs to be done with a focus on equity and compassion. Both teachers and parents of New Jersey students are concerned that tests overwhelm kids and that students are over-tested. However, combining a data-driven planning process with a focus on equity will ensure a range of student abilities does not become a barrier to teaching the curriculum at their current grade level.
Focusing on a K-12 accelerated-learning cycle means that educators must engage in consistent reflection using classroom formative and summative assessments as guideposts that allow them to identify the gaps where they exist and plan differentiated approaches to close gaps so students can continue to be successful on grade-level standards. This means reexamining key elements of effective pedagogy. Have we unpacked standards to ensure that the learning targets of daily lessons in all classrooms are tightly aligned? Have we identified the pre-requisite skills for each of our instructional units so that we can effectively use classroom pre-assessment tools to determine exactly where students are in relation to grade-level learning? Are we engaging students in understanding the learning targets and becoming partners in setting goals and monitoring their own progress through the use of effective feedback? What aligned and relevant materials and resources will engage the students and allow them to make meaningful connections to the real world?
Educators need the encouragement and the time to work together in authentic learning community teams to consistently address these questions throughout the learning cycle. They need time to not only share the workload, but also the ideas and best practices that will move student learning forward. To that end, instructional units should be living documents, continuously modified by teams of teachers so that they meet the needs of every student in every classroom. Pacing guides that focus on the breadth of covered content rather than the depth of learning must take a back seat.
John Hattie’s Visible Learning research analysis shows the collective efficacy, the belief of educators within a school that their professional collaboration will make the difference in student learning outcomes, has the highest impact on student achievement — higher even than socioeconomic status. Collective efficacy is not possible without time for professional collaboration. Schools can no longer use the excuse that we just don’t have the time for educators to meet in professional learning teams to grapple with the answers to the pressing questions that will determine the success of our students. The research on collective efficacy should move every school and district leader to create meaningful professional learning communities and turn ownership for curriculum, instruction and assessment back to the educators who work with our students every day. Shared leadership for learning must be our top priority.
Finally, focusing on the social and emotional wellbeing of students is crucial for cultivating the resiliency they need to overcome the setbacks of the pandemic. In an increasingly digital world, outdated textbooks aren’t nearly as effective. Digital resources can help close learning gaps for all students by boosting engagement, bringing representative and authentic material into the classroom and using it to facilitate collaboration between students. Engagement does not need to come at the cost of rigor; students will exhibit confidence when they first exhibit competence. They also allow teachers to easily track and measure student progress in real time so they can intervene more effectively, if needed, on the way to creating less dependent, more self-directed learners.
A number of New Jersey schools are beginning to show how these principles can be put into action by implementing connected action roadmap (CAR), a systemic process to school improvement. These schools have recognized the importance of embedding the learning cycle in the entire school and understand that it should be grounded in student engagement. This roadmap shifts the focus from compliance to practice and reinforces how collaboration among educators can assist students.
Students have faced historic and ongoing disruptions to their learning and it’s our responsibility to ensure they continue their education rather than repeat it. These learning-acceleration recommendations can be the foundation for addressing learning gaps — classroom by classroom. Ultimately, education leadership in New Jersey — and across America — must empower educators to work collaboratively to adopt an acceleration mindset and foster learning environments grounded in student-centered, high-rigor, high-engagement learning experiences. When we teach with acceleration in mind, our students build the mindset that they can thrive even in times of great strain.