According to an Education Week survey, classroom teachers spent the first six weeks after school closures troubleshooting connectivity and software issues, resulting in a 75 percent drop in instruction. Even as late as into the spring, classroom instruction was still less than 50 percent of pre-COVID numbers with district staff and educators challenged to reengage students with sound instructional practices from a distance.
In a recent edWebinar sponsored by FastBridge Assessment System by Illuminate Education, Dr. John Bielinski, Senior Director of Research and Development, Dr. Rachel Brown, NCSP, Senior Academic Officer, and Dr. Kyle Wagner, NCSP, Research Associate, explained that unprecedented events like COVID-19 create a vacuum of knowledge.
Related content: How our students avoided the COVID slide
According to the presenters, district leaders and teachers need reliable data to guide them to determine how learning has been affected, and remediations to recover critical student knowledge.
Implications of learning loss
Through its studies of summer reading programs and data collected from FastBridge Assessment, Illuminate Education reports that summer learning loss varies by household income. Students from low-income households lose about 1.0 to 1.5 months of learning.
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