Measuring Pandemic Learning Loss

• In Event: Catching Up With High-Dose Tutoring: A Promising Response to Pandemic Learning Loss

Abstract

America has long struggled with equitable access to high quality education. Now, as we grapple with how to best educate students during the COVID crisis, this struggle becomes even more critical. The ways students received instruction in the latter part of the 2019-2020 school year abruptly shifted; and the 2020-21 school year is uncertain. Schools to abruptly closed their doors and had to quickly pivot to online instruction. Prior studies have found differences in “summer learning loss” by students’ socioeconomic status (e.g., Burkam, Ready, Lee, & LoGerfo, 2004; Downey, Von Hippel, & Broh, 2004). Research has also highlighted the “digital divide” among homes with different income levels (Eamon, 2004) and racial makeup (Lorence, Park, & Fox, 2006). Poorer, minority households tend to have less access to online tools than their richer, whiter counterparts. Educators and policymakers alike quickly observed the repercussions of this divide, as students struggled to get online and anecdotal reports indicated that much of the assigned learning not happening. It is clear that “pandemic learning loss” will have major implications for the current generation of students, especially when it comes to traditionally underserved students.

This study empirically measures and contextualize inequities in access to and engagement with learning opportunities during the COVID crisis. We will recommend strategies to deal with the repercussions of the pandemic as it progresses.

We use two datasets to reach these goals—NORC’s AmeriSpeak Teen Panel Survey and Infinite Campus—to delineate high school students’ educational trajectories pre-COVID, trace their informal and formal learning behavior during Spring 2020, and track how their trajectories changed over the Fall 2020 semester.

AmeriSpeak is a nationally representative sample of ~2,000 students aged 13-17. The survey, which is being fielded in July 2020, includes questions about students’ access to and perceptions of educational content during COVID, how these may have changed due to COVID, and their thoughts about the future.

Infinite Campus is a national Student Information and Learning Management System used in 2,000 districts in 45 states, serving millions of students. Districts and schools use Infinite Campus to track everything, including class enrollment, class assignments, grades, attendance, test scores, demographics, and family composition. As schools adopted online learning, Infinite Campus quickly responded by launching a variety of online tools designed to support teachers as they implemented virtual instruction. These tools include online class attendance, grading, discussion boards, and learning outcomes. When schools resume in-person instruction, Infinite Campus will continue to collect the same types of data they were collecting pre-COVID-19, thus providing a national picture of student engagement and learning pre-, during-, and post-COVID-19.
Data collection is currently ongoing; data collection and analysis will be completed by April 2021.

Author

• Debbie Kim, NORC at the University of Chicago