Impacts across the board
COVID-19 cast a shadow this summer across everything to do with education, STEM education certainly included. In one arena, everyone “on the ground” in K-12 education – administrators, teachers and staff, parents, communities – scrambled to plan for a school year unlike any other. Policy-makers and researchers, at a slightly further remove, have worked to get a grip on what impact the pandemic might have on students and schools. Learning impacts, social equity, funding, and teaching techniques are just some of the areas of education caught up in the rough-and-tumble of pandemic-driven changes to school routines.
Learning loss
The summer slide is a well-established and much-studied phenomenon describing the loss of learning students experience between the end of one school year and the start of another. Brookings Institution researchers started with this framework in mind to model what a “COVID slide” might look like. Adapting the effects of school closures and moves to online instruction to learning loss models, they issued worrisome conjectures. More in math than reading, worse among younger students than older, learning loss looks significant. And a wild card, both short- and long-term, is the emotional and psychological impact on students’ learning capabilities and prospects.
Unequal effects
The Gates Foundation identified some specific results related to social equity of COVID-driven school closures. None of these results is surprising, but the detail and context provided for understanding them is helpful:
Access to digital learning is not equitable. Wealthier, white families do better than low-income and minority families.
College will be different for almost half of all students bound for higher education. They are deferring college, staying closer to home for college, and choosing cheaper college options.
School districts serving low-income and minority populations have planned less fully for distance learning alternatives.
Contacts decreased notably between schools and students, with almost half of all teachers reporting lost connections with students.
A further benefit of the Gates Foundation project comes from their researchers’ curation of other COVID-related information resources. They group projects as representing the perspectives of districts, teachers, parents, and students, all adding up to a uniquely comprehensive analysis of pandemic-era education.
Crushing blows to budgets
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyzed the possible fiscal impact of COVID-19 on education funding. It’s not good. States could be over $750 billion in the hole over the next three years. Even assuming increased federal aid to states, which seems optimistic under current political circumstances, the shortfall would exceed $500 billion. The HEROES Act, passed by the House but rejected by Senate leadership, would offer almost $1 trillion in aid to states, with large portions going to education activities.
Coping strategies
Meanwhile, day-to-day life for millions of students this fall, just as last spring, consists of online learning. In anticipation of this completely not-surprising development, doers and thinkers in education produced a raft of articles this summer offering guidance in how to make remote, at-home learning “not awful,” among other low bars. The recommendations end up converging on a series of similar principles or practices:
Keep the technology simple and use it the same way from week to week.
Take advantage of technology – interactivity is king! Quizzes, short videos, polling apps, annotated, shareable Q&A platforms, and many other tools exist to make online learning active and fun, rather than just a Zoom snooze.
Flip the learning sequences – set students to individual learning tasks, have them do some practice exercises, and then convene as a group to discuss the material.
Keep screen time activities short – the more people are involved, the shorter they should be.
Facilitate student-to-student exchanges outside of group screen times. Even if just by phone, getting students to interact in two’s or three’s on school-related tasks can fortify everyone’s tolerance for large-group screen sessions.
To read more about these and other approaches, try Education Week, the Stanford University CS Department, the Hechinger Report, Wired, Edutopia, or Edutopia.
And, finally
What does the beginning of school look like near you? In person or online? What does your crystal ball say about what comes next? Please be in touch with comments. And you are invited to share with any interested in friends or colleagues.
Eric Iversen is VP for Learning and Communications at Start Engineering. He has written and spoken widely on STEM education and related careers. You can write to him about this topic, especially when he gets stuff wrong, at eiversen@start-engineering.com.
You can also follow along on Twitter @StartEnginNow.
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