The scores for the spring 2023 New Jersey Student Learning Assessment are now in the hands of school districts statewide. Later this fall, the New Jersey Department of Education will present those scores to the State Board of Education for review. The SLAs are the state’s annual standardized tests for students.
The outcome of that review is likely to be predictable. If the scores do not show very significant improvement over the 2022 results, some members of the State Board and factions within the education press will lambaste the “failure” of traditional public education and educators to address COVID-19-related “learning loss” and long-standing achievement gaps. Those blanket condemnations will end with a demand that the Department of Education create an immediate comprehensive plan to bring all New Jersey’s students up to grade level in English Language Arts and math as quickly as possible.
COVID-19 interrupted the flow of school-based learning in New Jersey and across the nation. Pre-COVID-19 achievement gaps continue to exist, especially among economically disadvantaged students, multi-language learners and students of color. But scathing criticism based on a set of standardized test scores will not address those serious issues. In fact, there are strong arguments to suggest that the negative narrative has discouraged high school and college students from entering the education field, exacerbating the current critical shortage of teachers.
During the pandemic, many students experienced dysfunction and isolation without the comfort and consistency of positive school environments. Loss was pervasive, and school personnel had to cope with their own social/emotional issues.
The reopening of schools was a relief to many, but across the state, educators reported significant increases in depression and anxiety, not to mention harassment/intimidation/bullying infractions, all of which had a serious effect on learning environments.
Gradual recovery
Educators agree that post-COVID-19 recovery has been, and will continue to be, a gradual, holistic process. Often the ability to meet students’ academic needs has been dependent on how effectively educators can address their social/emotional well-being. James Earle, a superintendent in Trenton says that in his district, personnel are working to provide students with trauma-informed care while simultaneously “identifying foundational [learning] concerns.” Under those circumstances, notes Howell superintendent Joseph Isola, “The state cannot expect a one-year turnaround for both the mental health of its most vulnerable population — its children — to coincide with the same timeline for academic gains.”
But what about pre-COVID-19 achievement gaps? Are New Jersey’s most vulnerable students receiving the help that they need? The big picture is cloudy. According to Mr. Isola, “To date, the state has not published or pointed to any published reports that show any systemic review of school districts and the efforts made to remediate both academic and wellness gains for students. We have only been shown testing results.”
And those test results should be balanced with the knowledge that Student Learning Assessment scores, like those of other standardized assessments, are a better barometer of students’ economic status than overall achievement levels. Mr. Isola adds, “The state wisely requires Local Education Authorities (public school districts and charter schools) to use multiple measures when determining appropriate programming for students, yet in State Board discussions and in the public arena, LEAs and educators are judged by a single assessment.”
Despite the post-COVID-19 challenges, students are making gains that may not be reflected in standardized test scores.
New Jersey school districts began internal assessments and academic recovery efforts as soon as students returned to classrooms. This happened day to day, as well as after school and during the summer. Educators continue to use varying combinations of in-house, outside and online academic support to meet students’ needs. In Trenton, Mr. Earle noted, those efforts included a “serious focus on reading” in grades K-6.
Progress — and what inhibits it
According to Mr. Isola, student morale seems better this year in his district and the overall feeling in schools is “more typical” than last year. Academic recovery is still “slower than we would like,” he adds. Progress has also been hindered by factors that include larger class sizes resulting from teacher shortages, and an increased number of multi-language learners, some of whom also suffered from the effects of limited or interrupted formal education even before COVID-19 struck.
As always, the scale of tutoring and other recovery efforts depends on human and financial resources, and the lack of those makes academic turnaround increasingly difficult. Mr. Isola notes, “If, perhaps, the state honored its funding obligations while also working to make inducements toward public school educator careers, we could reduce class sizes to the degree that teachers’ collective efficacy could spring toward the possible instead of focusing on the magnitude of the probable.”
The DOE has championed high-impact tutoring as a means of boosting achievement, initiating the New Jersey Learning Acceleration Program. This grant-based effort provides qualifying LEAs with up to $768,000 each, “based on a tiered system of student enrollment correlated with maximum funding levels.” The single-year program, which was scheduled to begin on Oct. 11 and run through August 31, 2024, is designed to serve “districts with elementary schools and their students in grades three and four, but will allow LEAs awarded the grant to serve additional students as needed and optimizes funding for targeted tutoring through identified vendors or organizations in addition to schools and districts that meet established, research-based criteria.”
The DOE has also initiated the New Jersey Partnership for Student Success, which matches qualified volunteer tutors with school districts in need of tutoring services. To date, over 500 individuals have volunteered, and the process of matching tutors with schools continues.
Clearly, it will take time to fully implement and thoroughly assess the efficacy of these programs.
Post-COVID-19 recovery is a complex issue that defies simplistic explanations and remedies. At a time when waves of angry rhetoric from pundits and politicians threaten to submerge public education, a diminishing number of educators must work even harder to focus on the needs of individual school and district communities. Ironically, most of that overheated rhetoric has little to do with what is actually happening in the state’s classrooms.
Students are more than data points and schools are not factories. Resilience must be nurtured and long-standing barriers to student success must be overcome — now more than ever. It is easy to demolish public education with invective. It is much harder to build it up using a toolbox that includes genuine understanding of day-to-day life in New Jersey’s classrooms and a commitment to the consistent, adequate resources that will power the success of the students and educators who inhabit them.
