PLAYING CATCH-UP

In our High School Partnerships program, we offer a Summer Institute every summer, and we require our teachers to attend once every three years. Due to COVID and loosening attendance requirements the previous two summers, we had higher attendance this summer, seeing about 150 of our teachers. As difficult as it might be to believe, some teachers shared that they were all caught up in their curriculum compared to other years. However, most were not, and our survey showed about 90% were not caught up.

The question for school leaders is not, “Are your students behind,” but “How much are they behind?” Plenty of data shows we have work to do to catch up. One tidbit from the National Center for Education Statistics shows the largest average score decline in reading in 30 years and the first-ever decline in mathematics. One challenge is to find and fix the gaps while, at the same time, not falling any further behind.

We have 250 teachers in our program that we visit each year. Discussions with our teachers this year convince us that there are still significant struggles with gaps in student learning, along with a feeling of urgency about being able to catch up. One of our takeaways from our survey results, combined with these discussions, is to remind our school leaders that it is going to take longer than we think to overcome all the influences of COVID. Which raises the question, how do we catch up and fix gaps in learning and not continue to fall behind?

Our first suggestion is for school leaders and teachers to consider if aspects of the Flipped Classroom (FC) could be advantageous to get caught up. COVID has put us into a new era of potential regarding instructional practices. Consider that before COVID, there were major obstacles to implementing FC in our schools. These included a lack of technology for teachers and students, a lack of training for students and teachers with both hardware and technology, and generally a lack of understanding of effective instructional practices using technology. COVID caused schools to speed up that transition for putting technology into the hands of teachers and students and a crash course in using these.

Teachers can provide recorded “lectures” (of less than 10 minutes) for students to view outside of class so that the teacher can use classroom time for engaging in activities and helping students. We were encouraged by the quick transition by many teachers and students, but we all recognize that not all classrooms experienced success. While most of our “virtual observations” of classrooms were encouraging, and we saw teachers use practices that engaged students, we still observed classes that did not. Truth be told, we are reluctant to recommend using aspects of the flipped classroom because we think too many teachers will only use one part of it. It is clear to us that when used correctly, FC is a powerful strategy that could help teachers to make up for lost time.

One school’s solution to catching up was adding an additional math semester for students in the 2022-23 school year. So, during the typical junior year, where students normally take Algebra III and Algebra IV, they were instead taking Algebra III, Algebra IV, and a “Math Enrichment” course. Meaning one of the semesters had two math courses. Completing two semesters of work by taking three courses helped the school get their students back to “normal” as far as the math curriculum goes, most likely at the expense of an elective.

We quickly became interested in the Modern Classroom Project — (Articles — Modern Classrooms Project) after a high school teacher introduced it to us as a way to work with students who are not all at the same place in learning. We encourage you to consider if you have the right teachers and environment and if this option could help your students.

In our survey, we collected practices from teachers they were using to deal with gaps in learning. We have a concern and want to raise a caution. While we are familiar with Standards Based Grading (SBG) and see value in it, we are concerned with opportunists pushing a change without the necessary study. Our article is about the stress placed on our teachers and school leaders due to COVID, and we want to point out that the influence of COVID should still have our attention. While we will always encourage school leaders to consider research-based solutions to meet needs in our schools — which we think SBG is, the middle of recovering from COVID is not a good time to evaluate a new instructional paradigm.

There is much that has encouraged us by talking with and observing teachers over the last few years. Our encouragement to school leaders is not to conclude that teachers or students no longer need extra support to overcome the influences of COVID.

Teacher recruitment seems to be a hot topic in the minds of K-12 and higher education administrators and state legislators, and there is good reason for it; their workforce is leaving, and in high volumes at that (MSU Professor Stefanie Livers). COVID has magnified the area of hiring and retaining high-quality teachers. This is a challenge in normal years, but throw COVID into the mix, and this area likely rises to the top of concerns for school leaders.

Even before the pandemic, the teaching profession had been identified as a particularly stressful occupation due to heavy workloads, time-intensive teaching methodologies, limited autonomy, role ambiguity, and the need to manage the expectations of administrators and parents. Mandated online teaching, although necessary to promote the continuity of education during the pandemic, has entailed significant shifts in a teacher’s job scope, potentially impacting professional identity and job satisfaction. Teacher burnout has always been something that administrators have dealt with. It was a challenge in normal years when there was a decent pool of applicants. It seems that more teachers are leaving the field of education, and the applicant pool is getting smaller (Economic Policy Institute). As we all know, COVID was not easy for those working in education. Teachers nationwide were at work Friday and asked to work from home the following Monday. We cannot think of a time when such a radical and quick shift was asked of those that educate our youth. Changing everything that was once done in person to an online environment was not an easy task for teachers. On top of this and the million other asks, shifts, alternations, pivots, or, or… has exacerbated an existing problem. According to Madigan and Kim (2021), teacher burnout is directly linked to the likelihood of the teacher quitting their job. They described the symptoms of burnout as exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced accomplishment.

We think the data on years of teacher experience below, where about 40% of teachers are likely near or could retire, shows the importance of supporting teachers in ways that weren’t necessary in the past. We are concerned that COVID could upend the normal cycles in education. Who will fill those vacancies when they retire or worse, burnout at year 15?