Some students who consistently earned C’s in the past now have straight A’s, likely due to various forms of cheating.
The only verifiably valid aggregate data that has been collected so far is from our in-person students. When we administer SOL tests this year, we will get a reliable accounting of the skills of the students who will take the test, but many students likely will not come into school to take their tests. SOL tests are not allowed to be administered virtually due to test security protocols. Because of these issues, we won’t be able to fully assess the impact COVID has had on the education of our students until we resume in-person instruction for all.
The pandemic has also taken a tremendous toll on our educators. These folks were trained to teach students in face to face classrooms, and that training and experience doesn’t translate easily into the online format. This spring and summer, teachers spent countless hours learning an overwhelming array of new skills to try to meet the needs of their students in an online format. They had to recreate the wheel and convert all of their traditional materials into digital format. Please keep in mind that there has been an ongoing teacher shortage, and the effects of the pandemic will surely worsen that problem.
The stress and worry about how to change from in-person to virtual-instruction overnight, and how to do so in a way to ensure positive outcomes for students, was overwhelming. Add to that the stress of changing the plan many times from 100% virtual, to in-person instruction, back to virtual when they didn’t have enough teachers who weren’t in quarantine to have school, back to in-person instruction, back to virtual so everyone could get vaccinated, and etc.
Most teachers in divisions that offer in-person instruction not only have to provide for the students in their classrooms but to virtual students as well. The problem gets even worse for teachers in those divisions that operate on an A/B hybrid schedule in which they have three groups of students to teach — group A kids, group B kids, and virtual students. This scenario is a record keeping/ organizational nightmare to manage. All teachers report spending significantly more time planning, creating new materials, and grading work that is not turned in on time than they spent prior to the pandemic.
Teachers don’t get into this field to get rich, they do it to do good things for kids. They worry they are not sufficiently providing for the educational needs of their students. Because many virtual students are not turning in much work, they’re receiving failing grades. Worse, they are not progressing enough to achieve success in the next grade.
We will likely experience the educational effects of COVID for years. Prior to the pandemic, most students moved on to the next grade having mastered enough of the prerequisite skills to be successful, but some moved on without sufficient prerequisites in place. Working with students on various skill levels created a difficult problem for teachers. This problem certainly will be exacerbated by the pandemic. Despite the fact that educators are developing and implementing plans to mitigate this to the greatest extent possible, it is unrealistic to expect that summer school, after-school tutoring, or extended school years can effectively make this problem go away by August.
It is also unrealistic to expect that we retain students who have not progressed sufficiently to ensure success during the next grade. Many of our at-risk students simply bide their time in school until they turn eighteen and then drop out. If we do not develop a plan to ensure they can meet their graduation criteria prior to their eighteenth birthday, they will likely not earn a diploma. Retaining students a whole year will make sure that these students will turn eighteen prior to meeting the criteria to earn their diploma.
Throughout all of these conversations across the state, educational professionals expressed the belief that, over time, we can overcome the educational outcomes posed by the pandemic. However, this will take time, and there’s certainly no silver bullet that will make it easy.
Matt Hurt is director of the Comprehensive Instructional Program, a coalition of non-metropolitan public school systems in Virginia.